Leading Geneticist: Human Intelligence is Slowly Declining

Healthy Living

Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But human intelligence is suffering for other reasons as well.

According to Crabtree, our cognitive and emotional capabilities are fueled and determined by the combined effort of thousands of genes. If a mutation occurred in any of of these genes, which is quite likely, then intelligence or emotional stability can be negatively impacted.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues,” the geneticist began his article in the scientific journal Trends in Genetics.

Further, the geneticist explains that people with specific adverse genetic mutations are more likely than ever to survive and live amongst the ‘strong.’ Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ is less applicable in today’s society, therefore those with better genes will not necessarily dominate in society as they would have in the past.

While this hypothesis does have some merit: are genes really the primary reason for the overall cognitive decline of the human race? If humans really are lacking in intelligence more than before, it’s important to recognize other possible causes. Let’s take a look at how our food system plays a role in all of this.

It’s sad, but true; our food system today is contributing to lower human intelligence across the board.

The Water Supply, Fluoride is Lowering Your IQ

Researchers from Harvard have found that a substance rampant in the nation’s water supply, fluoride, is lowering IQ and dumbing down the population. The researchers, who had their findings published in the prominent journal Environmental Health Perspectives, a federal government medical journal stemming from the U.S National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concluded that ”our results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children’s neurodevelopment”.

“In this study we found a significant dose-response relation between fluoride level in serum and children’s IQ…This is the 24th study that has found this association”.

One attorney, Paul Beeber, NYSCOF President, weighs in on the research by saying:

“It’s senseless to keep subjecting our children to this ongoing fluoridation experiment to satisfy the political agenda of special-interest groups. Even if fluoridation reduced cavities, is tooth health more important than brain health? It’s time to put politics aside and stop artificial fluoridation everywhere”.

Pesticides are Diminishing Human Intelligence

One study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that pesticides, which are rampant among the food supply, are creating lasting changes in overall brain structure — changes that have been linked to lower intelligence levels and decreased cognitive function. Specifically, the researchers found that a pesticide known as chlorpyrifos (CPF) has been linked to ”significant abnormalities”. Further, the negative impact was found to occur even at low levels of exposure.

Lead researcher Virginia Rauh, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health, summarized the findings:

“Toxic exposure during this critical period can have far-reaching effects on brain development and behavioral functioning.”

Processed Foods, High Fructose Corn Syrup Making People ‘Stupid’

Following 14,000 children, British researchers uncovered the connection between processed foods and reduced IQ. After recording the children’s’ diets and analyzing questionnaires submitting by the parents, the researchers found that if children were consuming a processed diet at age 3, IQ decline could begin over the next five years. The study found that by age 8, the children had suffered the IQ decline. On the contrary, children who ate a nutrient-rich diet including fruit and vegetables were found to increase their IQ over the 3 year period. The foods considered nutrient-rich by the researchers were most likely conventional fruits and vegetables.

Interestingly, one particular ingredient ubiquitous in processed foods and sugary beverages across the globe -high fructose corn syrup – has been tied to reduced IQ. The UCLA researchers coming to these findings found that HFCS may be damaging the brain functions of consumers worldwide, sabotaging learning and memory. In fact, the official release goes as far to say that high-fructose corn syrup can make you ‘stupid’.

Gene mutations may have something to do with the ongoing decline in human intelligence, but let’s stop to think for a moment what we’re doing to ourselves to make this decline even more prominent.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Matt Drudge and Drudge Report for linking to this article.

Post written byMike Barrett:Mike is the co-founder, editor, and researcher behind Natural Society. Studying the work of top natural health activists, and writing special reports for top 10 alternative health websites, Mike has written hundreds of articles and pages on how to obtain optimum wellness through natural health.

people who are less intelligent can afford to have as many kids as they want! It stands to reason that unemployed (lower IQ for the main) have more reason to reproduce . – bigger house/more benefits etc… If I had say 3 kids within three years, i would need to pay around £2000 per month in nursery fees alone, never mind having to pay for a bigger house and having to cut my working hours. Where’s the incentive for me? I can only afford to have 1 kid. We are breeding ourselves into oblivion. Lower IQ all round please! Just what the overall plan is!

White people are the most criminal lying Con Artist you’ll ever meet. For example White America is truthfully potrayed by none other than Donald J.Trump, Our Liar in Chief. Yes White people set such high & mighty examples of being a True Criminal Con. Most White people should be in prison, like all the white Bankers that caused the 2008 economic collapse. But don’t worry Trump will save all the whites & outsource all their jobs. After he gets rid of the rest of America. Trump will make America Poor Again.

A critical point this article doesn’t mention:
In general, the more intelligent people aren’t going to eat poisoned crap, or drink fluoride… They’ll be more likely to drink filtered water, and eat organic foods. In other words, these poisons are primarily only making the less intelligent people dumber and sicker.

A far more likely cause of diminishing intelligence (and in turn, degrading of our society) is the fact that intelligent people are more responsible with their reproduction, while the intellectually-challenged are popping-out babies with abandon. This is problem is only increased by allowing illegal immigration to run rampant in a society.

I know of families working on their fourth generation humans who have never had a drop of their mother’s mammal milk. For some reason, the first thing the more ‘civilized’ tribes give up is breastfeeding.

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One medical doctor I know believes that flouridation of water was introduced precisely for the reason that it makes people stupid. According to this doctor, the Nazis discovered that administering flouride to concentration camp inmates makes them docile and easier to control. The American government picked up on this and decided to repeat the experiment here in the USA, apparently with good results.

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Loonies obsessing about fluoride also see Jews under their bed, blame them for 9/11, are negationist and cry all day on the self inflicted fate of the palesto-simian baboons…standard fare from the anarcho-idiots, the Trotskos, the neo-nazis and their jihadi idols…

I am asking myself: is this an assertion coming from a scientist? He declares tha humans are less intelligent than before. So I ask him: when was made the last mankind scale intelligence evaluation and what was the result; when was made the actual evaluation; what difference was acknowledged. If I remember well, there is a big problem with intelligence assesment, because intelligence is a very fuzzy concept. And if I remember well, the genetics is just beggining as a real science – they barely started by mapping the human genome, but mapping the genome is like first stage of OCR(optical character recognition): they got the text, but not the language – they don't know what the genes do, notwithstanding about the connection between the genome and the intelligence of an individual. So, my conclusion is that his conclusion isn't a scientific one, but a mere personal one.

They completely ignored the racial aspect of declining intelligence– which may be the most important factor of all. As the White European population decreases while the black/ brown population increases, naturally IQ will decline, and violence, instability, and chaos will increase. Things have been slowly devolving for decades, and will continue to go downhill.

I'm sorry to post but this question is so retarded. All intelligence is, is how well a human can response to it's stimulus. It's how well a person can function in this society and pick things up to survive..That is all it comes down to..Intelligence is limited and we are just reflection of our society.

The real reason that humans seem to be getting stupider is the structure of the English language with its great emphasis on illogical emotions and factless content of similes and antonyms. There is a solution to this problem and that is to define most of the words being used in a logical way and inventing some which are necessary to fill the logical gaps.Eliminating most emotionally charged words and slang is also a step in the right direction. I have updated all the flaws in the English language in my book SCIENTIFIC THESAURUS and hope that it will soon be taught to all impressionable elementary school students and anyone wishing to view the world more reasonably or logically. Enjoy!!!!!!

Indeed, I have been observing the increase of stupidity, for at least 2 decades, even in universities, even among some professors/lecturers of mathematics. And in several countries. You get evidence for this by looking at how they think, watching then speak, take note of the stoopid questions they ask in conferences or seminars…. The smartest of the dumb ones have found a way to pretend they are smart by asking questions which appear sophisticated to those who are already dumb or by preaching to the layperson. The only cover for them is provided by the unfortunate fact that people think that mathematicians are smart–by definition; which is totally untrue, in several cases.

I had the chance to read some of the Greek headstones left from antiquity around the Black Sea Coast and I was so impressed of their wife's devotion for their husbands that you won't believe your eyes. Such a beautiful statement for their beloved husbands I will request some of the pics and put them on internet . The way we were and the way we are now indeed dumbos, idiots you name it. Thanks to Monsanto, we will make some progress to be more dumber than we are

Also, "After recording the children’s’ diets and analyzing questionnaires submitting by the parents, the researchers found that if children were consuming a processed diet at age 3, IQ decline could begin over the next five years" may just mean more about the IQ of the parents, do they care about what their children eat & do they care about their education?

I thought the whole point of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" was that it was survival of the most numerous, in which case it's very easy to believe that 'adverse genetic mutations' (& idiots of different varieties) are more likely to survive. We breed without reason, often without any personal means of keeping our offspring (the state, charities, etc pick up the bill).

I suggest everyone watch the film 'Idiocracy' but watch it as a documentary.

How can the geneticist or anyone else tell whether intelligence is declining among all human beings? This is an unintelligent position. Fluoridating water with salts of fluoride is intelligent since it makes for healthier teeth and reduces cavities. It is an inexpensive public health measure for good results.

The part about floride is bull… If you read the actual study (link in the article) you would see that it says high level of floride (like in high polution areas) can cause those effects, not the levels in drinking water. "the NRC report examined the potential adverse effects of fluoride at 2–4 mg/L in drinking water and not the benefits or potential risks that may occur when fluoride is added to public water supplies at lower concentrations (0.7–1.2 mg/L) (NRC 2006)."

Could be that people with higher I.q.'s are more career minded and have fewer kids, while lower I.q. people forget to take birth control and have more kids. So smarter people are decreasing as a percentage of the population while stupid people are increasing.

There's a term in library science, 'infoglut', when a search inquiry retrieves lots of information of which many is redundant and can't be latch in anyway to the purpose, the objective of the search and by extension,from an psychological angle, you might see it as a form of gluttony, a desire to wallow in huge packs of data and documentation to satisfy less a keen and motivated interest in a subject or a range of topics, connected or not, for the sensation, the thrill to possess it even if there's not a practical use for them, a feeling of empowerment by possessing them and adopting them more like cut-up headlines, easily to digest and to show off with, but lacking depth of true, even basic knowledge and acquired not by method but rather spuriously, randomly, skimming over a matter's surface, but quick to withdraw oneself for the dive. In a time of ubiquitous fragmentation, fragmentation of knowledge and personal wisdom comes natural, it swirls around, grating shards in a vacuum, going nowhere, achieving nothing, slowly eroding itself to dust that falls flat on a desert without character nor a spark of life.

Interesting article. I agree with many of the suggestions that the various environmental influences in our society and lives are impacting on our health and cognitive and other abilities. In addition, we are increasingly becoming a lazier and lazier society. We need an app to tell us how to drive somewhere? We need to use a remote control to lower the volume on the TV when it's 3 metres away from us? Nobody climbs tress outside anymore, we can't relax since everything has to be done as quickly as possible, food has to be 'fast', we need a quick-fix when we're ill so our bodies can't recover naturally at it's own pace, thereby strengthening its immune system (of course, there are medications that have it's place). On the whole, we're pathetic! Think of those studies that show that all this everyday physical activity is required for correct cognitive development, especially in children, yet we lack so much of this activity in our lives. In addition, our genes are not static; they are dynamic and react with their environment so that a bad diet, lack of excercise and cognitive laziness will create genetic changes that consequently get passed down the line. So sadly, yes; I would say that every single detrimental environmental factor mentioned in the above comments, together with lack of physical activity and adversely impacted genes would most likely contribute to our lack of intelligence :(.

Indeed, we humans are no different than any other animal, genetics plays a serious role in what your offspring will be capable of, you cross breed two physicists, you will have a bright progeny 99% of the time,.
The reverse also applies.

Hmmmm, this may explain how post-modern liberalism came into full flower over the last one hundred years to impose its political idiocracy on everyone else. Either that or liberalism is a mental disease that needs a little gene therapy.

How else to explain how the most incompetent, divisive, mendacious failure of a president recently got re-elected.

Didn't need a scientific study, just watch the voting trends, people show their absolute ignorance when they vote with their feelings and not with intelligence. Americans are too stupid to figure out that the welfare teat is going dry, and those taxpayers having to carry the burdon are eventually going to say " no more" to society's parasites. liberalism/marxism is a mental disorder.

I think the research Weston Price did looking for the healthiest ‘tribes’ of people gives us insight. He found there were groups of isolated people living away from the modern diet. His thousands of photographs of their bone/teeth formation and studies into the nutritional value of their foods revealed some basic facts. It didn’t matter if they lived in a hot climate or cold, as long as they ate simple natural foods including small amounts of animal protein, good quality fats, fresh vegetables and small amounts of fruit. They grew to have perfect teeth, strong disease free bodies and lived harmoniously together. People living high in the Swiss alps or living with hostile weather conditions like those off the coasts of Scotland, were content without allopathic drugs, lived in communities without mental illness or crime. Their sense of family was strong. Intelligence is about emotional maturity, being able to understand situations whilst remaining calm. This is a biochemical state, where the cells are nourished and our ability to be rational and fair is optimal. I would really recommend reading his work, Nutrition and physical Degeneration.

This article is pretty much drivel, as are many of the responses! The idea that people a thousand years ago were smarter than people today can never be proven. Most of them had very short lives, very little of which was ever recorded for future study. Floride has never been shown to cause mental impairment in anyone.
Same for genetically modified food. Remember the Alar (made apples shiny) scare? Remember the mercury in vaccines scare? Pretend science can be dangerous as is demonstrated here. The reason we think people are dumber now is that they are being listened to more. Sounds crazy, I know, but as Mark Twain said so eloquently, "the dumber they are, the louder they talk". In the past, these people were ignored. Now they elect presidents who support their idiotic ideas.

Crabtree's theories sound gimmicky to me. First off, regarding Athenians, the outcome of the Peloponnesian Wars come to mind. The Empire was utterly convinced of its superiority and initiated a war to rob its conquered opponents of resources. It was an epic fail and led to complete destruction of the empire, which went from an early type of Democracy to Oligarchy.

But Athenians didn't have our modern technological aids in terms of self destruction. The cult of progress certainly has its roots in Plato but we're bringing it to new heights– along with a very Platonic-sounding genetic apologia for all of it ("poor breeding'). But prescription drugs now kill over 200K Americans a year, modern medicine is a leading cause of death and the US now boasts the worst child mortality of any developed country- #49 on the CIA world index. We have 3 to 5 times the childhood vaccine– none of which have ever been tested for safety in combination– of the top ten countries with the best child mortality, more than any country in the world. 1 in 10 Americans, adults and children, now take one or more pychotropic drugs with known mutagenic and neurotoxic effects. 60% of our food supply is GMO and factory farmed meat with its pesticide residue, new pathogens, hormones and antibiotics dominate the market. The rate of developmental disability and chronic conditions among American children is astronomical.

People discuss green house gasses but often fail to mention the whopping increase in mercury and other heavy metal pollution, all of which are neurotoxic, immunotoxic, mutagenic. So I agree, the environmental explanation for failing schools and declining mental health is more compelling than genetics.

Intelligent people don't have as many kids! The stupid ass government pays worthless idiots with no jobs to keep screwing and having kids so they can get more welfare money. And people take pills for every ailment instead of eating healthy, which makes them sicker, and hospitals keep people dying longer rather than living longer. Survival of the sickest and dumbest!!!!!!

The real reason humanity is becoming dumber is that we have circumvented Darwinian evolution. You know, survival of the fittest and all that. We preserve the dumbest of us and protect them from removing themselves from the gene pool, then they out-breed the rest of us. Wake up social progressives.

People around the world need to be aware of an organization seeking to exploit the youth of the world with a very expensive international educational program called International Baccalaureate or IB. IB markets its programs as creating "critical thinkers" and "global citizens". It is dumbing down our schools in order to create "global citizens". Academics are an afterthought.http://truthaboutib.com/

Good and timely post given there are whole professions today that rely on accurately predicting societal moods. The non-questioned ones work for marketing firms on the one hand and politicians on the others. Those no one questions, no one knows about work for some bigger trend setters. Nice to know about the at least.

Government has made it expensive, inconvenient, and hazardous to have kids. There are easily accessible, effective, forms of birth control. Potential intelligence is heritable. Generally people act to maximize their perceived best interests. Given these true statements, isn't it obvious that intelligent people will be less likely to have children? I'm a sample of one, but I have an measured IQ of 150 or so, I'm 54 years old, I'm not gay, I'm popular with women, and I don't have children. Care to guess why? Because in today's world kids=trouble, no matter how much you love them.

Where did the samples come from? Who was in the samples? Is it possible that there is a combination of self-fulfilling prophecy and survey error going on here? Maybe, as difficult as it may be to believe, the intellectual elites in the US are more likely to spend extra money on "organic" foods, and to avoid processed foods, opting instead to make meals from scratch. That would only prove that children of intelligent parents are less likely to eat processed foods, GM foods, or foods treated with pesticides. It would not prove that these technologies are harming intelligence.

As for chlorpyrifos, EPA-funded university scientists and the EPA have been trying to tie it to cognitive problems for about 20 years. Other than poisoning many pregnant rats and producing impaired rat pups as a result, they haven't gone very far.

Of course, they may be missing the forest from the trees. Statistically, those with lower intelligence reproduce at a much higher rate than those of higher intelligence, so the AVERAGE intelligence of society will become skewed in the wrong direction. With tghe birth rate dropping in developed nations and rising in third-world nations, the long term implications are rather frightening.

decreased fertility with increased socioeconomic status gained through intellect. it's called DYSGENICS. some of the greatest minds of the past 150 years have been concerned about this trend (galton, darwin, fisher, pearson, crick, etc.). this is nothing new. it is a shame that even acknowledging this fact destroys a scientist's reputation in our politically correct culture where no differences between individuals can be noted. additionally, past means of selection are no longer relevant to our civilization because of modern medicine and technology. this is said with no judgment, just making an undeniable observation. who knows what we'll do with this knowledge. perhaps, as francis crick said, "i would be astonished if, in the next 100 or 200 years, society did not come round to the view that they would have to try to improve the next generation in some extent or one way or another."

I've got to admit that I'm not too sure about the checmicals; however, I do know that our educational system has done their best to continue to dumb down what our children learn.
One of the problems is math. We don't teach our kids to work things out in their head. We don't give them basic skills. We give them a calculator. We eliminate the need to think.
English. We don't teach them how to spell or provide rules on proper usage. We give them a computer with spell check and grammer check. Of course, none of them use it.
We tell them twitter is great.
We tell them they're special when they've done NOTHING.
We give them trophies for absolutely nothing other than showing up.
We tell them they don't have to learn cursive writing. All those emoticons will get them through.
We do nothing to teach them to think and then we wonder why we get a report like the one above?

If that hypothesis holds true, then primative people who live outside the grid of modern cultures and diets should test higher, in relative terms. This not being the case would tend to indicate environmental factors are involved in average IQ. Mass education likely shares some blame. Kids score a bit higher on repeat math tests if they solve a math problem without a calculator, and repeat scores are lower for peers who used calculators on their first test.

What a politically correct hogwash! The main reason of declining intelligence is the greater reproduction rate of people with lower intelligence. That's where we got thanks to idiotic liberal welfare and population policies (and, unfortunately, also thanks to progress of medical sciences enabling genetically undesirable individuals to reproduce – solution in that case is not ethically easy).

People with high IQ are having only one or none child while the welfare recipients have a bunch. And it is well known and proven that the heredity plays a great role in the intelligence of children. What we need is eugenic policy that is obviously in the interest of the whole society: (1) we need to be competitive with other societies, and (2) smarter future population can provide more for the elders, for the smart one and stupid ones as well.
We need incentive for educated / intelligent people to have more children and discouragement of less productive part of society to have more than one child, especially in hopeless wellfare situations.

It doesn't take a geneticist to realize this.. It's common sense if you are paying attention and have an I.Q. over 95… For Christ's sake, the US population just re-elected a guy who put us in more debt in 4 years than the guy before did in all 8, who is overtly destroying the economy and the private sector, and who is overtly trying to destroy the 2nd and 10th amendments, if not the constitution as a whole.

ANYONE can see this if they know just a little history and are paying attention.

Unfortunately, most Americans are too busy coloring, playing xbox, and talking on their gov't subsidized smart phones to take their civic responsibilities even slightly seriously.

We are starting to reap the effects of mainstreaming the less robust (genetically speaking) though the social structures in place to protect the poor, weak and down trodden. By desiring a dependent class, the social engineers are skirting natural selection. A form of eugenics was practiced in past generations through social class structures and by breaking those down in the name of fairness we are seeing the results.

We see individuals that are now mainstreamed, who would have been shunned by society a generation ago, breeding. The talk of mutation driving evolution here is suspect. There have been idiots and fools all through recorded history. We, as a society, enable that behavior and protect it now.

An extreme example would be the seemingly sudden emergence of Autism on the scene. Autism has been around for a long time and those genes have been around even longer. The explosion of Autistic children is simply the result of social structures put into place over the last 30 or 40 years having unintended consequences.

Because we give these kids special care in the educational and medical systems we get more functioning adults with Autism in the population as a whole. A generation ago these individuals would have lived with their parents well into adulthood and would have been described as "odd" or "slow". Most would have never married or had kids.

There is nothing "evolutionary" about this. The theory states that better genes will breed more successful offspring and that natural selection will then weed out the less successful. We should be seeing smarter, more intelligent and capable people. Instead we are seeing less intelligent, less capable people. This is a direct result of the class warfare been waged at this time.

It won't turn out well either. After our genomes and brains are mapped and the government controls our lives though the guise of "healthcare" those in charge will start fearing the dependent masses. Eugenics of a more sinister nature will arise again. With the technological ability to implement a master race, we will see the rise of the Nazis again.

Autism is just as likely from impurities injected in infants than from the lesser set breading. Really, the huge flaw in the eugenics movement, hence your comment, is their proposal to sterilize the world to rid us of 'useless eaters' kills off generations of genetic variability needed to avoid genome collapse that necessarily occurs through inbreeding and weakening of species. While you may wish to breed with your own family, you risk your very own progeny in a few generations. This is a hard cold fact. Otherwise, you do write well.

Watch the movie "Idiocracy". We penalize the smartest and most hardworking, causing them to put off having children — often until it is too late to do so — and subsidize the creation of more and more children by the dumbest and least productive. What did people think would happen?

What about the deliberate dumbing down our schools are doing to our current students? It is all part of the plan. What is also happening is that the truly educated are having less children while the dumbest people in our society keep breeding like rabbits. This has an overall effect on the population's intelligence. But as my husband said once… the dumb keep breeding and mankind gets dumber every year.

Dumber? I find the smart kids very smart and the dumb ones uninvolved. And of course the dumb ones are coddled and kept nowdays when they used to die young. Another issue is celebrity. My daughter really picked a stupid uninvolved maggot infested human-like individual. Just like the girls did when I went to high school. Of course over the 50 years I ran a business I had the pleasure of refusing to hire those guys and girls. I don't think it's the water or anything like that. It is simply adverse selection at work.

The notion that the general intelligence level of the human race is on the downward slope is an appealing idea given what we are experiencing in culture and politics. However, to paint the entire human race with this tar is itself a stupid idea. There are today, and have always been, intelligent folks and dimwits with every degree of difference between these two extremes. Was Einstein more intelligent than Isaac Newton? Was Isaac Newton more intelligent than Aristotle? Intelligence is a wonderful attribute within the walls of academia. But in the general world "resourcefulness" and "curiosity" win out every time. These men had not just intelligence but the curiosity to wonder. But without the resourcefulness of a myriad of other lesser known individuals, the ideas of Einstein, Newton, Telsa et al. would have been nothing more than interesting theories and experiments. Together, they make the human race advance rather than just survive. Those cultures with a high degree of resourcefulness and curiosity advance quickly. Those which do not inculcate these qualities do poorly. Sadly, today our culture here in the States emphasizes these qualities less and less, instead incentivizing the masses to follow today's Pied Pipers into homogeneity. Thankfully, those with curiosity and resourcefulness are not so easily led. I do not pretend to know if resourcefulness and curiosity are inherited or learned. But without them, a man is doomed to remain in the pile at the bottom of the ladder.

" Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .”—-Bertrand Russell,1953

Someone should show Richard Dawkins and his little followers this study. They tend to think ancestors a few thousand years ago were a bunch of idiots even though they built structures like the pyramids, invented mechancis, the basis of all of our mathematics, philosophy and to some extent science, even though they had no previously built pool of knowledge.
It's hard to imagine a human today; having nevr thought or heard of something like algebra, just "inventing" it. Everything we know and invent is just an extension of what we've been given.
This article supports something I've suspected for a long time and, if true, explains quite a bit.

The dumber human groups have more children than smarter humans. Morgan Freeman reported on Through The Wormhole that Hispanics are the stupidest race in America with Jew, Asians, and whites at the top. Hispanics have the highest birth rate at 3.2 children per couple. Obviously, the population will get stupider.

Miscegenation is making people less intelligent. Civilized people mixing with uncivilized begets someone who has all the cunning of the savage world mixed with "a little knowledge" and creates dangerous and unpredictable individuals. President Obama is a shining example. Like they used to say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

How about the fact that the intelligent people are mostly limiting themselves to only 1 or 2 kids. Conversely, the baby breeders who don't work and aren't as smart are spitting out 5 or 6 kids each – AND GETTING PAID TO DO IT WITH WELFARE & FOOD STAMPS . That is a huge reason society is getting dumber. Political correctness of course prevents you from even mentioning it, but it must be dealt with.

Guiding your children in who they select to breed with is more critical than any of this BS. My grandkids are far superior to myself, my wife, their parents, and there other grand parents. Don't think that many people don't veto their children's relationshops when we see them going in the wrong direction. That's one of the big problems where the father or both parents are absent. That may be the biggest contributor to any decline, if any indeed exist. Accidental breeding ofeten doesn't end well, especially for the children.

Finally, an explanation as to why so many people voted for Obama. The federal government has been trying to dumb down the electorate for years with the help of CNN,ABC,MSNBC,the NY Times and other sundry liberal media. It is a proven fact that liberals walk around with their heads in the clouds and noses pointed up. That is why they keep tripping over their feet.

This is common sense. The people in society at the lower end of the genetic code are reproducing faster than everyone else. It’s unacceptable to say such a thing in today’s world, but is undoubtably true. Humans have a genetic cancer in a way because we don’t play by natures rules.

Well, duh!
We are subsidizing the breeding of leftist welfare babies by the millions. Did you really think that would INCREASE intelligence in the country?!!
Obama and pals are purposely breeding a race of slaves.

When men look for mating partners, how high does intelligence rate as a priority? Not usually the trait at the top of the list. I think in the last several thousand years, no increase of intelligence can be attributed to evolution. Just like the author believes ancient Athenians would be brighter than the average person today I think the average person in Revolutionary War-era USA would be brighter than his counterpart in today's America.

Well what we are seeing is a well executed plan. There is a plan against the American people to make us the stupid. Its like organized criminals have said "the best way to break the law is right in front of the police". The conspiracy to dumb us down is working well so that those in power who wish harm on us can carry out the other parts of their nasty plans right in front of us without us noticing. Be careful because they appear to be preparing to enact their end game. Hyper inflation is about to set in, they are making a move to take the guns, they are about to implement obama care(which will have an RFID chip in every American by 2015) and tensions between Iran and Isreal are heating up. Any and all of these things could lead to martial law, in which case they get to accelerate their devious plans. Get informed and get the word out.

this is a really stupid article and you all are believing it. our children are both smarter than us and their children are much smarter than they were in school. i can see how much more their brains have advanced with each generation.

Well now …. that article certainly explains why there are so many more liberals running around the country than the smarter conservative oriented members of the population. I am convinced that Liberals with their endless cannot-possibly-work policies that have been tried and failed over and over. This growing number of Liberals is a true sign of the deterioration of the mental abilities required to make sound decisions and produce a successful society. When asked, Liberals do not have an answer for why they chose their candidate. They just say something like … "well, I just like him" or "I always vote Democrat" or "he promised to give me free stuff". One of my faves is "Conservatives are too scary" … which is to say … "Reality is too scary". Reduced intellect doesn't begin to cover it.

Canada and the USA are rich in resources and technological abilities. Is there any reason whatsoever that we should be anything but successful going forward? Yet we are on a path to destruction. A path that is being mapped by our corrupt and stupid politicians. They, along with greedy corrupt bankers and a smattering of industrialists and big investors, have entered an unholy alliance that is guaranteed to eventually generate a revolution and an ugly civil war. No one wants this, but those who have control are obviously too stupid to do what is necessary to avoid it. And those … are the Liberals.

Not that I didn't know this already, but this news — "human intelligence slowly declining" (except that I differ that it is happening "slowly") — explains exactly how Hussein 0BowMao got re-elected. We are truly living in an "Idiocracy."

We have allowed our schools to become substandard, the subject matter excludes the teachings of the Constitution, Civics and American History and Government, we instead teach moral duplicity and use revisionism to corrupt institutional works, we are now more in line with PC and hippism or let the good time roll.

The news is a great teacher in so many ways, it tells on society and shows just how foolish and lackadazical we now are, it diminishes the ability to form common bonds and comunicate in a reasonable manner, instead we let political ideology interfere because school administration is a government protected society and assisted by corrupt unions that steal away the representation needed to make the proper change and return to a reasonable norm of decent education…..

The dumbing down has been done purposely by those who believe in collectivism, relativism and a few other- isms! We don’t need to go back to ancient Greece to find intelligent humans; our decline began in earnest in the sixties.

Not only is ‘survival of the fittest’ less applicable today; Western industrialized nations have been practicing REVERSE-Darwinism for decades via graduated income taxes, welfare benefits and foreign aid.

It has become commonplace for people who aren’t smart enough to support THEMSELVES to have multiple offspring (anecdotal evidence abounds, like this 36-year-old father of 10: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/815171_M… ). Meanwhile, the brightest among us, afraid of being seen as irresponsible parents or inadequate providers, often remain childless or limit themselves to just one or two children.

The author may believe the decline in human intelligence is taking place slowly, over millenia, but from what I have seen it is occurring rapidly, over the course of a few generations, with disasterous social and political consequences.

Which is why people who want to protect DNA integrity and future generations from today's stupidity, the FCC's lack of any biological considerations of modern studies in their radiofrequency/microwave standards – would want to send a reply type of input to the FCC before March 6, to encourage biologically-based exposure standards, rather than merely physics-based standards as they now have. The last time the FCC updated standards was before the wireless revolution. The 1996 guidelines created by engineers are outdated, at best. http://firstdonoharmblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/act…

"Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber?"

The only thing that surprises me is that these people believe that it's happening SLOWLY. Personally, it seems to me like an all our race to the bottom. People have told me for years that I'm heartless for saying this, but we have got to stop saving stupid people. We've got to stop saving lazy people. They breed more than the smart, productive people, and we encourage it by supporting them. I'm not saying we have to actively reduce their numbers, we just need to get out of their way. Natural selection can take it from there.

I've thought this for many years and even named it: my Saber-Tooth Tiger Theory. Long ago, the smarter beasts took out the idiots. Now, we coddle them with completely-expected results. Obama is one of those results of coddling morons.

I have a sincere belief that it comes down to parenting! Make an effort to raise a child to understand the importance of an education. Eventually, the cycle of ignorance will be broken. EVERYONE has great potential if given the opportunity!!!

In today's world, we see a lessening of Darwinian pressure to survive. Just a few decades ago, if you were not smart and fit, you died. This phenomenon got very nasty if one's place of habitation was far from the equator. To get through the winter, people had to design food storage modalities, build superior weapons to kill game, quickly start fires (zero fresh vegetables or fruit to be gathered), and tan animal hides to make clothing. If you failed, you died as did your children. Not smart + not strong = death. Today in developing and developed countries, there is clean water, packaged food, and antibiotics if you become ill. We make sure that not only do the unfit live, we make sure they reproduce.

It's so funny sitting here reading an article and listening to people basically support Eugenics. The same belief is a big factor in what caused WW2. It's nothing more then the Progressive idea repackaged. They were vilified and some of them (Margaret Sanger anyone??) were run out on a rail by the American people. Now, they've just waited a couple of generations and brought it back. Nothing new here, just the same old crap repackaged, and it'll have the same result it did before.

Sciences role in WW2:

1. Darwin's theory of evolution: Taught survival of the fittest.
2. Scientific Racism-the belief that science can prove that various races are inferior
3. Eugenics-the idea that by breeding out the "inferior" and "mentally feeble" we could create a better man.

Each of the three influenced Hitler in his run up to, and through, WW 2. This is a fact when one studies the subject thoroughly. So, now we've come full circle on it again. I'm sorry, but the definition of insanity it doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It lead to darkness and a World War then, and it will now.

And what IS true is that the races are in no way equal, that the limited research that is allowed into the subject confirms this, and that it's only white people who try to deny the obvious. Allowing blacks to vote has contributed nothing of value to either America or the human race in general. Did black jury members contribute anything positive to the OJ Simpson trial? The single biggest travesty in the history of our species was introducing blacks to America through the slave trade. If only we could go back in time and blow those first ships out of the water what a better society we would have today.

Seems to me that those who BELIEVE this Professor are PROVING his point..It's NOT the IQ of people but the ability WANT to learn TO think OUT of the box.. TO think critically and logically .. THIS is something that MANY teachers have NOT encouraged here in the USA SINCE the FEDS took over the School system.. the PUBLIC schools system does NOT make any room for those who don't CONFORM to what they want to teach, NOR do they allow for them to be questioned.. their whole structure is we are ALL the same ..THINK the same. are GOOD at the same things,.,. .therefore NO NEW ideas come to the forefront.. NO ONE can excel in one area while not in another.. Such as one person might learn better from visual while another might from books.. still another would completely blow the other two away with HANDS ON..to MUCH is put on testing and not enough on actual knowledge..

Anthropologists have known this for a long time. But I notice how the article conveniently left meat and eggs out of the equation, probably in an attempt to be politically correct to vegans. Actually, studies have proven that the brain shrinks faster on a vegan diet, no matter how many fruits and vegetables are eaten.

The humans with the largest brains were those that were hunter/gatherers. The human brain (as well as body) began to shrink in those societies who turned to an agricultural diet (especially with grains as the base). Meat, fish and eggs are far more nutrient dense than simply fruits and vegetable. Even Neanderthal people had larger brains than modern men. But the lie that meat is poison and causes all kinds of diseases (a bogus notion which has never been proven) had to be maintained in this politically correct article.

At the time that civilizations turned to grains and the brain began to shrink, was the same time that researchers begin to see all of the diseases of civilization begin to show up (cancer, heart disease diabetes, , arthritis, IBD. Etc..). The Egyptian people were suffering from diabetes and heart disease, according to CT scans performed on mummies. Though fruits and vegetables can be healthy, they are only a supplement to a meal centered around meat, fish or eggs if we want our brain to ever again reach the size of our Paleolithic ancestors.

People are as smart as they have ever been. India, China, Japan are bringing them in to the USA. It is the decline of our society, and drug filled brains taking the country down. No moral values, no standards for the crud pumped in our brains with reality TV, the F word being present as normal language, on and on. Anything goes. Broken homes and day care raised childern. Why excel when the government can support you. It worked for mommy or daddy.

This is not hard to understand. Survial of the fittest includes intelegence, until recently in history those who could not care for themselves would die off naturaly. We now take care of those who cannot do so therefore passing on week genes there fore Iq goes down,

This is an interesting article but the results are likely meaningless if not adjusted for the socioeconomic levels of the parents. As you know, the effect could be attributable to this alone if the experimental design did not account for it.

I would appreciate it if you could comment on this so we can know if the difference noted is perhaps meaningless?

Guessing at how stable or smart an ancient would be compared to today’s citizen is pretentious at best.

Herbert Spencer is attributed with the theory of ‘survival of the fittest’, not Darwin.

Beyond adaptation to ones environment, intelligence is not a necessary survival characteristic. Bacteria aren’t too bright and they do just fine. The idea of exceptionalism and elitism based on genes distort our perception of the world and lead us to the distorted and often monstrous ends demanded by eugenicists.

The title is misleading and I’m still not convinced that the intelligence of human beings is declining for the species. Believing and guessing that genes are responsible for a decline in intelligence is … well, stupid. I think that the author rightly redirects the topic toward environmental factors but the controversy of genes versus environment overpowers the argument for environmental causes of lowered intelligence.

"Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber?"

Only if I'd been in a coma lately? How do you think we ended up with the most hapless, inept, economically illiterate president in our history, first elected, and after four disastrous years, re-elected?

You somehow failed to mention the main reason, at least here in America, the disastrous, failed public education system that for 30 years has failed to educate the populace.

When you remove "Challenge" from Education and give a Trophy to the losers, what do you expect?
"The wealth of a nation, of a world, consists in the number of superior men that it harbors, and often it seems that these men are too different, too dreaming…"

there are several influences at play and several false assumptions. it only looks as if people were more intelligent a 1000 years ago because much of the writings and scientific work that survived throughout history comes from intelligent people. i don’t believe much survives from dumb people. This creates the illusion of a more intelligent historical society. the truth is most people were uneducated 1000 years ago and couldn’t write or do basic math. education was for the privileged elite class of royalty and nobles. You have to look at the attributes that allowed man to survive and multiply through the ages. the truth is the key survival skill was not intelligence. because man had a tribal mentality intelligence needed only to manifest within relatively few of its species who would later take leadership roles. the key attributes for survival were those related to physical survival such as building a home, growing food, hunting, fighting etc. Women are still attracted to these attributes in men because our shift in what it takes to survive from more braun and less IQ to less braun and more IQ has not yet manifested in the genes. this shift is coming.

By the way, all these political replies are trying to change the subject and warp your thinking. There are warehouses full of computers where young men and women type propaganda for the right-wing all day, spreading right wing anti-gospels on every website they can find, even when the subject is science – not politics. Stirring up hate. The corporations poisoning your food supply own the votes of the politicians that allow it.

As with everything – it evolves, it grows, meets its peak, and then slowly degrades back to its origin. And then the "seed" that started the life starts to "sprout" again. Some of us are already there since we act, think, and still look like apes – Darwin's Theory of evolution proven on a daily basis.

Don't know where my posts went or why I cannot post this whole thing in a single post, so I'm going to post and reply to myself.

Funny that this comes up. The other day I was talking to my brother about the seeming swift decline in intelligence that I have seen. While I don't want to make this a political thing and I don't really have a dog in the fight, I find it odd that people of a liberal mindset tend to demean those who have a religious (creationist) worldview and are more than happy to trot out Darwinism in their ridicule of those who are religious.

Those same people who espouse Darwinism are also the ones who insist upon imposing social-ist [sic] policies and social engineering on the populace; dogma that, in practice, artificially bolster the weak so they may live amongst the strong, which flies in the face of the Darwinism they hold to be law. And in doing so, while they think they are 'doing a solid' for mankind, they are actually doing the opposite by taking from the strong and giving to the weak, thus allowing the genetics of the weak to perpetuate and infiltrate the population.

Ultimately, the strong will be brought down to the level of the weak and society will be the worse for it. In practice, it is like a herd of zebra trying to protect the slow one from a pride of lions instead of running as fast as possible to escape – the end result is much more grave than the slowest zebra being picked off. Just seems a bit duplicitous and counterproductive to me. But, it is in keeping with the geneticist's findings that adverse genetics are more likely to survive today as compared to the path – we agree on the what, but not the why (or at least he does not 'go there' as did I).

With respect to the geneticist's assertion that someone from 1000BC would be much more enlightened and stable, I would say that springs less from genetics than it does from society and culture – nurture rather than nature. Certainly, the education and entertainment of that day and age were more pure than that existing today. Honestly, I think we suffer from information overload in this day and age. Take that away and focus on the fundamentals from day one, I do not think that the outcome would be sufficiently different.

As far as those who have said that those of higher IQ have a lower rate of reproduction versus those of lower IQ, which ultimately selects for individuals of lower IQ, I agree. Unfortunately, I am also guilty of creating that problem as I do not want a child myself. However, I do find myself occasionally pondering sperm donation for the purposes of perpetuating strong genes in the population.

Sure, high IQ is great but wait until the system collapses. I’m sure your high IQ and college degree in Philosophy will save your life when some trigger happy ex marine slits your throat for your food.

If people as a whole are getting less intelligent, with less lively and numbers of synaptic connections, I am not surprised. There are soooo many factors influencing this trend, including the introduction of
mass food production systems, allowing the compromise of consumer health. Your health is being undermined by corporations that care only about their bottomline. Like genetically modified corn produced by monsanto corporation, that pollutes the bloodstreams of childbearers in the US with poisons designed to kill insects for lazy farmers.

I agree that we as a people have become dumber and more emotionally unstable and there may actually be a genetic aspect to this trend but I truly doubt that genetics or food intake or any of the reasoning discussed in the article or comments thus far are the main culprit. Ideology is the main culprit in the dumbing down of society. We have become an emotion based society that craves entertainment over substance, comfort over hard work and where critical thought has been abandoned for a more selfish and myopic world view. This feelings based culture has infected our politics, education system and even the most basic understanding of how society works. This whole trend started in the university system so I doubt any professor or researcher would dare point their finger back toward their own kind but the lions share of the intelligence and critical thought problem is born of ideology. You want higher intelligence and a more educated society? The ball is in your court.

Assuming the ancient Greeks were emotionally more stable and intelligent than the modern human version is a stretch, and that’s not even considering the Greek’s fellow Roman propensity for violence in mass entertainment when life was short, brutish, and nasty. This has to be another faculty lounge fantasy?

The industrial revolution was created by White men..The success of the USA was due to White men like Carnegie,Vanderbilt,Edison,Ford,Rockefeller.Medicine,science,engineering,math.Now the White male is an endangered species .Appalling statistic.. University California system ..only 12% White males due to affirmative action and further discrimination through race/gender based scholarships and discriminatory so called "diversity councils".Sorry..the truth hurts

With respect to the geneticist's assertion that someone from 1000 BC would be much more enlightened and stable, I would say that springs less from genetics than it does from society and culture – nurture rather than nature. Certainly, the education and entertainment of that day and age were more pure than that existing today. Honestly, I think we suffer from information overload in this day and age. Take that away and focus on the fundamentals from day one, I do not think that the outcome would be sufficiently different. (Continued)

Ultimately, the strong will be brought down to the level of the weak and society will be the worse for it. In practice, it is like a herd of zebra trying to protect the slow one from a pride of lions instead of running as fast as possible to escape – the end result is much more grave than the slowest zebra being picked off. Just seems a bit duplicitous and counterproductive to me. But, it is in keeping with the geneticist's findings that adverse genetics are more likely to survive today as compared to the path – we agree on the what, but not the why (or at least he does not 'go there' as did I). (Continued)

The brightest 53% are too busy supporting fatherless breeding explosions of baby-mommas and baby-daddies to have many children of their own. It’s exponential and impacts everything from our capabilities to our political/economic/social/justice systems.

Might I also suggest modern methods of communication make us dumber? Marshal Mcluhen’s 1964 book, Understanding Media, hints at this. A derivative work by Shane Hipps continues the juxtaposition of written and oral tradition societies into the Twitter era. He notes that, only a century before, most educated people were once capable of listening to a 3 hour lecture. Good luck with that today. Perhaps how we aren’t training our minds has something to do with this as well.

Those same people who espouse Darwinism are also the ones who insist upon imposing social-ist [sic] policies and social engineering on the populace; dogma that, in practice, artificially bolster the weak so they may live amongst the strong, which flies in the face of the Darwinism they hold to be law. And in doing so, while they think they are 'doing a solid' for mankind, they are actually doing the opposite by taking from the strong and giving to the weak, thus allowing the genetics of the weak to perpetuate and infiltrate the population. (Continued)

Funny that this comes up. The other day I was talking to my brother about the seeming swift decline in intelligence that I have seen. While I don't want to make this a political thing and I don't really have a dog in the fight, I find it odd that people of a liberal mindset tend to demean those who have a religious (creationist) worldview and are more than happy to trot out Darwinism in their ridicule of those who are religious. (Continued)

No doubt these studies have some merit. We are aware that many in the Executive branch enjoy their fill of fast foods, fried chicken, Big Macs and more unwholesome foods. The results are evident. Look forward to 2016, these dumb———— will only continue to wreck the country.

I have predicted this for years. conciousness has proven not to be a fitness trait. On the contrary, it sows the seeds for its own destruction. The measure of fitness is the number of viable offspring left to be the bearers of genes. Yet it is the those we suppose are at the top of the conciousness/civilized pyramid who have developed and chosen to use the means to have fewer or no children. At the same time, these same people have bought into the myth that as civilized people, they must enable others, the 'less fortunate' to stay in the pool in large numbers and propagate. Eventuallly the number of these grossly misguided sorts will be greatly diminish. Then there will be another free-for-all amongst the dumber people. Their numbers will shrink, and mercifully the human population will shrink. I would think then, that, once again the brighter people will have a survival advantage. No one wants to hear or believe this, but human intelligence will always bump into a wall unless it can proceed without the baggage of altruism.

By the way, did any of you geniuses actually READ the fluoride article? They were talking about high levels of fluoride and concluded by saying this effect was a POSSIBILITY and needed further study. This was NOT definitive.

Idiots used to die off because they were idiots. Natural Selection used to rid the gene pool of the losers, but instead, we now strive to retain the failures. The inevitable decline is due to Man Made Manipulation of the gene pool. If you only breed dogs that jump far, you end up with farther jumping dogs. But with people, rewarding the failures, increases the failures.

1) Liberals taking over schools and abandoning the teaching of critical thought. Seriously, people 100 years ago could examine complex problems systematically and solve them, whereas most school children today cannot. Critical thought has been usurped by left wing political ideology in the classroom.

Standards have been consistently lowered in order to keep graduation rates high. As a result a high school diploma is worthless.

2) Advanced medicine does contribute by making those who would have died due to genetic flaws survive and pass on their genes. Many people today would die within weeks of a major catastrophe like a meteor strike…not due to the meteor but due to the disruption in the supply of food and drugs.

3)There is some actual merit to the fluoridation argument. Fluoride has been shown to adversely affect the brain and I think that it should stop immediately, if for no other reason then the fact that the government should not be taking the choice away from the individual- if you want fluoride in your water, drink it yourself. Don’t force me to have it.

Mike, great article, thanks for writing about this.
One thing though, there is not such thing as the "human race". Humans are not a race but a species.
Decades of liberal indoctrination have conditioned some people to think otherwise but science is still science.
Based on this, you should add "political correctness" as one of the main factors in the declining of human intelligence.
It really makes people very stupid.

Humans are designed to get human milk for the first several years of life. The widespread use of artificial baby milk substitutes has contributed to the decrease in intelligence. sometimes you hear it put that Human milk makes babies smarter? No, B=baby formula is so deficient that it makes babies less smart. There are so many things we don't know about nutrition, especially in the early years of life that by arrogantly changing the main food of our children from human milk to a wide variety of substitutes we have been conducting in essence a global uncontrolled experiment on the vast majority of human children that will ultimately lead to disaster.

MOST OF THESE JERKS ARE LIBERAL MISFITS. OVER THE YEARS WE HAVE GOTTEN BOOKS ON OVER POPULATION HENSE, DIASTER. ALL OF THIS AND THATS, THAT DONT MEAN A DAM THING. IN THE 70'S YOU LIBERALS MORONS TALKED ABOUT GLOBAL COOLING. NOW WERE BURING UP. IT'S ALL CRAP LED BY FOOLS LIKE ROBERT KENNEDY A TOTAL NUT CASEL, DARYL HANNA, ALL LEFTIST WHO CAN GO TO HELL. IN TRUTH THERE REAL PROBLEM IS WITH HUMAN BEINGS, THEY HAVE A HATRED FOR HUMANS BECAUSE THEY ARE DISTROYING THE WORLD, SO THEY THINK AND SAY. I SAY GO TO HELL. AND BY THE WAY, I DRIVE A CAR, NO SMOG WITH 550 HP=FAST AS HELL!

. I didn’t see any comments from a creationists point of view, so I thought I might bring a different perspective to the discussion. If we were created instead of being an evolved species, then one would expect to see intelligence decline over time. Living in a “fallen” world, the perfection that was created would slowly unwind into a form of chaos. Mutations would lead to loss of information in the genetic coding. Over time we would see systems go from an order of complexity to a lower order of disarray. Yes the environmental conditions have a direct effect, but as somebody brought up earlier that would not explain the world wide reduction in IQ.

One only has to read the comments here to see the decline in intelligence reported in this article. The causes…that is far more complex starting with the abandonment to serious study for the half-truths and innuendos available in poorly reported articles like this. 200 years ago, people survived war, famine, pestilence, and disease. There was essentially no medicine, no antibiotics, and little concept of disease or inflammation. And yet, you are now worried about 1ppm fluoride in your drinking water? GMO crops? Everything you eat has been genetically modified. Ever seen maize in the wild? Inedible. People now have the luxury of worrying about silly pointless little risks in their lives because most of the big ones have been eliminated or mitigated.

public schools
liberal media
hollywood
tv
espn
DC
And, parents et al who follow the above.
The destruction of the human race.
But, at least they'll feel good about themselves, regardless of their irrational and irrelevant lives.

I'm afraid this is old news. Mankind was the most brilliant at the Creation. After the Fall, everything began to deteriorate, including our lifespan and intelligence, as we got further and further from the knowledge of God. During the Dark Ages, when the average person was forbidden to read or own a Bible, plagues rampaged the populace. If we had been following God's instructions for staying pure and healthy, we could have spared ourselves much grief. Now that we have access to God's Word and His Common Sense, we are living longer than ever. We have countless people in our area who are in their late 90's with clear minds, btw. This is an agricultural community. We use pesticides so that you don't have to have uninvited guests on your plate along with your food. So, no, I don't buy into the "Pesticides are killing us" argument. It isn't valid. The facts indicate the opposite. What do you want? Hoards of locusts ravaging our crops and leaving our fields bare and grocery shelves empty? Because that's what you will have if you ban pesticides. A better idea would be for all of us to get back to God, make our streets safe again so that children can play outside, and all of us get off of our fannies, away from the tv and video games, and get moving again. That is what will clear our minds and strengthen our bodies.

Remember when Dr Watson told the truth about blacks and intelligence? And now it’s “cool”to have a black and white kid. Sorry but the reality is when intelligent people breed with a scientifically proven intellectually inferior race, the result will be an overall negative. Facts are facts.

Well, duh!!!! How else do you explain Obama getting a first term, let alone a second term? It seems the decrease in intellect advanced rapidly between 2008 and 2012. If the decline continues to increase at this rate, we could get Hillary in the White House in 2016.

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face. Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk… ice cream. Ice cream, children's ice cream. You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I… I… first became aware of it during the physical act of love. Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue… a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I… I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred. Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women. But I… I do deny them my essence. have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?

You don’t have to look for environmental causes, like Fluoride or Pesticides as causes – it’s birthrates, modern medicine, and social policies that guarantee this.

It’s well-known that birthrates are highest amongst those in poverty. In the US, social policies have the effect of incentivizing young, uneducated women to have multiple children, with most government entitlements tied to having children.

A young single woman with children gets Food Stamps, housing vouchers, welfare payments, Medicaid, etc, etc. If they don’t have children, they get far less, or nothing. These women will never work a day in their lives, but they’ll have 5, 6, or 10 children. In the past, those who bore 10 or 12 children into poverty would see many of them die.

Now, we spend millions on just 1 premature crack baby born into a NICU, then hundreds of thousands more feeding, clothing, housing, and attempting to educate them, until finally, we either bury them, or send them to prison.

Medicine and food programs now allow idiots who don’t even have the wherewithal to feed themselves, much less their children, to spawn like cockroaches.

Meanwhile, those with aspirations, who finish high school, who go to college, who get jobs, they wait until they can afford to have children, then have 1 or 2 children. And by the time they’ve hard their first child, many of their generational peers are already grandparents.

I hate to use pop culture references, but the opening sequence of “Idicocracy” has it exactly right. There will remain a minority of intelligent people who keep things running, but in a reverse-Lake-Woebegone, the “average” person is “below average.” And the effect is far more pronounced in the younger generation.

I invite you to read some “Letters Home” from Civil War Soldiers – many of them farmboys and the like before the war. Many of those 16-year-old farm boys are better writers than the average NY Times columnist.

If you look across all the countries. You will find the education of the female is inversely proportional to the number of babies they will have. ie Phds have 1 kid, grammer school drop outs have 5+.
That is why industrialized nations are having population shrinkage and the Muslims chop heads off people who try to educate girls.

No mention of television. I think it's quite possible that watching 4 to 6 hours of Amish Mafia, Honey Boo Boo, American Idol or what ever mind numbing K rap everyday, may lower IQ's, and it surely won't raise it.
Try giving up, fluoridated water, processed foods and television for 3 months. Clear your mind of the constant fear they try to sell you in the media. You might just be amazed and unconfused.

The Federal Government, by enabling people of one economic group to have babies for free at the hospital, offering free medical care, offering food stamps, providing low income housing, and doing so without any real requirements to improve themselves, has multiplied the ignorant. Those who are self-supporting have to pay the full bill to have a child, pay for their own medical care, which is often not covered for pregnancy and childbirth, have to feed themselves, have to pay full price for housing and are taxed and charged more in order to pay for those who "can't" do for themselves. It is a selective process that works against the natural order of selection.

Also at issue is the fact that the government, while supposedly waging a war on drugs, has done little to stem the tide of drug addiction, both legal and illegal, alcoholism and pot use. The government and our society have removed, in general, almost every bad consequence for self-destructive behavior, which seems to cause people to behave even worse. So while the clean cut person in their 20s and 30s struggles to make ends meet and establish themselves, refraining from having children until they can afford one or two, the dopers and the unemployed have plenty of time and financial assistance to pump out baby after baby after baby. The government helps them out with handouts and quite a few of the children end up in foster care or in the legal system. It just goes on and on.

We should be testing those who are running our government. The President, Senate, Congress, the Cabinet and all of the leaders of our country should be tested for all forms of mind altering substances and they should have to be cleared by a doctor to be able to work and pass bills.

Simply scroll through the comments and take note of the incomplete sentences, misspellings (with an integrated spell checking feature, no less), and errors in grammar, punctuation, capitalization and so forth.

I believe this is more Darwinian than anything else. In a competitive natural environment, the strong (smart) have a greater likelihood of surviving and breeding. In our current cultural environment, the least capable of thriving have the ability to survive and breed, often without constraint and at high rates. There is no proximate need to be smart, because today dumb works just as well. Remember however, Darwin alsays prevails in the end.

Welfare state allowing parasites to breed all they want to,
Godless leftist controlled indoctrination centers (public schools),
Decades of brain altering drug usage, passing on damaged chromosomes to their offspring,
Government forbidding parents to discipline their children,
A generation of youth that were never punched on the mouth for being arrogant,
Compulsory militant feminist indoctrination to the nations girls,
Compulsory feminizing of the nations boys,
Government celebrating perversion as normal practice,
The hollyweird sewer allowed to pump out what ever vile puke it wishes,
The murder of 50 million little babies.

This article is about 40 years too late. Not even stocking up on firearm and ammo is going to save you from the wrath to come. It’s going to be worse for you because you had great light shown to you.

Pure junk science. Never sites a study or data substantiating the claim that human intelligence is decreasing. The only evidence I see that such may be true are the comments indicating there is anything of substance in the article.

If we are talking about human genetics, why cherry pick and bring back an average citizen of Athens?

Why not bring back an average human from planet earth in 1000 BC. He/she was likely about 28 years old, about five years away from death by starvation or being killed by invading armies, illiterate, held in servitude, with rotten teeth, and a diet high in organic foods that were typically half rotten and full of life threatening bacteria (with no refrigeration). His or her life was about to end because they didn't have pesticides, modern agronomy, fluoride in the water, etc. The actual scientists above are keying in on secondary effects of treatments that have been introduced to cure much worse maladies than a supposed loss of 1 or 2 IQ points.

Let's start with the declining intelligence of the geneticist and the kooky posters here. If they were out living their life and using their brains for something other than conspiracy theories they might improve their brain power.

The main reason we are getting dumber is that dumb people are living longer and procreating. It used to be that dumb people would do something dumb like throw a rock at a bear or put a hand in the threshing machine but we protect people with guards and warning labels and such dreck. Now instead of culling the dumb they live to create more dummies.

Can you think? Did you learn anything about the 'scientific method' in 8th grade science?
———- THIS GUY IS MAKING IT UP OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH ———-
Reject the practice of correlation & hyperbole proffered as anything but a guess, uneducated or not.

We are getting dumber because everything we need an answer to is instantly available through technology. No reason to remember anything, or pass down remedies, etc., when our question is just a click away. Old folks experience is of no interest or use to today's generation. Very sad indeed.

American moviemaker Mike Judge diagnosed this problem eight years ago in his movie "Idiocracy."
Contemporary social policies across the board encourage mindless, endless, limitless, reproduction among those cognitively underendowed segments of society least likely to contribute.
They also discourage reproduction among the more cognitively endowed.
Of course the population is getting stupider. That's who's doing the breeding.

You sir are the one dumbing down. You are out of your mind. And, if scores show that humans are becoming less intelligent, it's because you are combining all scores, ALL, doesn't matter grade levels, etc. Plus, when the schools went to teaching "self esteem" (a parent's job) basic subjects, that doesn't help either. Then schools got really political – oh yes, that teaches them well. I don't blame the teachers though, I blame their professors that supposedly taught them how to teach, their administrators and our "wonderful" government for demanding what to teach and that certainly wasn't anything positive for a student to excel. It was more propanga for control. You sir, are the cause of it if it exists.

It is more likely that the prime cause of increased stupidity is social. Children used to learn how and then become young adults. Now they enter a transition phase called teenager in which they learn largely from other ignorant teens at a time when their brains are developing rapidly. Significant learning opportunity has been lost. Thought fragmentation with tweets and texting have made it worse. A century ago they formerly would have been interacting mostly with knowledgeable adults who spoke in paragraphs.

This supports a Divine Creationist theory. Mutations are much, much more likely to be deleterious to the gene pool, and SHOULD degrade over time, given that we were created nearly perfect. Just think of your computer code. Even one misread instruction in the code will crash your computer. How often does it lead to a different more brilliant app?

Well double DUH. We've been inbreeding the entire lower class American population for over 60 years. And the Black population has gone from about 2 million in 1865 to 35 million now with little or no new genetic material being introduced. You can see the recessive genetics coming to the forefront in the lowered intelligence and other detrimental characteristics. Same for lower class whites.

The reason human intelligence is declining is because of Liberalism. Liberals don't use their brains for anything other than getting high. Ratherr than think or question anything their leaders tell them, they use their emotions as they nod their heads and drone on like the good little Lemmings they are.

Like, Duh! People have to be dumbed down so they can be persuaded that the "government" will provide for all the needs and keep the people secure. Problem is, this never works – check history. Let people be responsible for themselves, be able to pursue their desires and dreams, be responsible to the One who created them and gave them a desire to accel, then you have what America was for the first 200 years!!

Face it. Cell phones are the most visible sign of the end of the human race. I challenge the authors to find more than 3 people under 60 who don't have a cell phone almost surgically attached. It is a disgrace.

And who is surprised by that? It's been an obvious trend for years. Education is respected, society follows the lowest kind of trends in fashion and dance, intellectualism is decried. It's also interesting that the upper classes have only the number of children they can nurture and educate while the lower breed as many as they can in order to get more government support money. Welfare and liberalism are killing society, and both should be ended.

I have found a possible explaination for diminishing intelligence not mentioned in the article. It's in the Bible, written by God, who is realy smart.
Psalm 111:10- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all they that do his commandments.
Proverbs 9:10- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
Romans 1:21-22- Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

This past electin is absolute proof that there is a very rapid decline in intelligence especially inthe US. Evidence? The reelection of Obama…there can be no question of the mental decline of humans at a very advanced stage in the US. We can look to the UN for even further evidence on a global basis.

This is course is the direction todays euthanasia movement, otherwise named 'the reproductive rights movement'.
So I don't put much weight behind his assessment of the people then, nor his own overview of the history
of athens of 1000 bc. And there was no greek nation state(s) then- otherwise known as he 'hellenes', but just some primitive city states. The Jewish culture and civilization was in high gear, the accounts of those peoples giving the pre socratics their start have survived to this day. That early jewish peoples had enormous gifts may be a far more reasonable assessment

The average IQ is declining because the low IQ groups are breeding, much, much faster than the high IQ groups. For how many generations will the world continue feeding the children of people who keep breeding as fast as they can even when they can't feed themselves?

You can talk about pesticides all you want. The fact is we've lowered our educational and moral standards to the point where a child's work ethic is incredibly behind that of children 120 years ago. It's almost impossible to find a primary educational system that teaches the classics – debate, rhetoric, latin, rigorous mathematics, economics and the philosophy of civics, etc. Kids simply aren't exposed to cirriculum that promotes thinking for themselves and focuses on the fundamental and necessary topics which develop a strong electorate.

But whether pesticides or a shift in education and morality, I agree we're getting dumber. We have an electorate that votes for its representatives even when those representatives defy the laws of economics. It would be the equivalent of people who would vote for a politician because he told them he could suspend the law of gravity. I can see justification for restricting the right to vote once again, unfortunately. An ignorant populace is far more dangerous.

I've known this little tidbit for over 20 years. The general dumbing down of our society was the beginning with lower the educational standards so "no child is left behind", then social morals began to decay, coupled with the inability of a parent to discipline their children for fear of prosecution by the courts, to mass media and instant information at the snap of a finger. People don't HAVE to think anymore, someone has already done that for them, formed their opinion and spoon fed it to the masses. We have well and truly entered the age of Idiocracy. Prez Camacho will be along promptly to whoop some ass.

This is not science but some offbeat person's personal opinion that is not backed up by any scientific facts. Good grief. any change in the genome can have both positive and negative impacts on "intelligence". As far as emotions are concerned, this article is way out in wild speculation. Lets hear it for a real dumb news filler.

Rob: Dr. Crabtree is a research scientist at Stanford, a geneticist. Also, it is a well-established scientific fact that random mutations are overwhelmingly destructive. Try some “random mutations” of the source code of your computer’s operating system and see what you get.

The welfare states are subsidizing stupid. Then like a crop, they populate enough to vote in a majority. It's a feedback loop. Subsidize stupid people, they vote for more subsidies, they plop out more stupid people,,,,,

People excite only about the "means" to increase the money, but
Lose the desire of "object making" that was essentially separates humans and animals.
And the joy which polishes the wisdom to devise and creativity has been lost gradually.
Centralized materialism to quantify all things, would kill the "imaginative power" which makes man's brains active.
貨幣が貨幣を増やす”手段”作りだけに人々は興奮し、人間と動物を本質的に隔てていたobject making欲を失い、工夫する知恵や創造力を磨く喜びを徐々に喪失してきたこと、そして全ての事柄を数量化する唯物主義一元化は、人間の頭脳機能を活発にする”想像力”を枯らしてしまう。

People excite only about the "means" to increase the money, but
Lose the desire of "object making" that was essentially separates humans and animals.
And the joy which polishes the wisdom to devise and creativity has been lost gradually.
Centralized materialism to quantify all things, would kill the "imaginative power" which makes man's brains active.
貨幣が貨幣を増やす”手段”作りだけに人々は興奮し、人間と動物を本質的に隔てていたobject making欲を失い、工夫する知恵や創造力を磨く喜びを徐々に喪失してきたこと、そして全ての事柄を数量化する唯物主義一元化は、人間の頭脳機能を活発にする”想像力”を枯らしてしまう。

I my school days at least a full chapter was devoted to GEORGE WASHINGTON and ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Nowadays, history textbooks include maybe ONE PARAGRAPH about GEORGE WASHINGTON. Maybe ONE SECTION on ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
I saw(and took) part of a test given to FIFTH GRADERS in the 1850's. Out of 20 questions I got only 5 of them correct! When I graduated high school 93-100 was an A. Ten years later the lowered it to 90-100. I graduated in the top 20% of my class. Now I would be Harvard material.
Try reading the speeches of Washington and Lincoln. Read the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Check out The Federalist Papers(written by some of the Founding Fathers. This stuff was heavy thinking for them. For most people today it's not a thought!
Did you watch the Jaywalking portion of the Old Leno show(pre-primetime failure)??
Some of the people questioned were elementary and high school teachers(mostly from California. They were idiots!

99% of kids today could not read the writings of the founding fathers and comprehend the philosophy contained in their thinking. They could read the letters and not even know whether two of the Founding Fathers were in agreement or whether they were debating. The sad part is, 99% of adults could not do this, either. It's why we end up with Obama and Romney as the "best" choices.

Like "climate change" (formerly known as "global warming") demonstrates – scientists are myoptic, too, and do not see this as the cycle it is, but rather see it as some terminal crisis event. Europe had its Dark Ages (which was not quite as dark as pop culture makes that period out to have been). As long as somewhere, some group is teaching the core basics (private schools), there will be a group of people intelligent and capable enough to carry us through the Idiot Age.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that literally billions of us sit on our behinds all day watching TV, looking at Facebook, reading trash mags about the exploits of the latest white trash to make millions as they parade their lives in front of the world, play mindless video games for hours on end, etc., etc., etc.

I love how they brought up how some Greek guy brought to the present day would be the smartest and most sane person we knew. Really? How can they POSSIBLY know that?

You want smart kids? Don't use the TV as a babysitter, don't buy them video games when they are small and use them as a babysitter, do get them books to read to expand their minds and imagination, and make sure they value education. In other words, be a parent.

You obviously have never read the ancients. Go ahead eread Aristotle our Plato and come his modern equivalent. unfortunately humans lack spatial awareness now. Just go for a drive if you don’t believe me.

Oh and he is absolutely correct about memory. The average human in ancient times had a superior memory. Imagine you could recite the Odyssey or the Koran from memory. Our ancestors did this.

It would have to be a privelidged Greek citizen – one that actually spent time in the Greek academies. No doubt ancient Greece had its share of dumb citizens, too.

A lack of parenting and the dumbing down of school subjects, along with an absolute rejection of accountability and discipline is leading to this idiocy. Kids should be spanked in school. Kids should be forced to do their homework by parents without being threatened by CPS or some idiot from the ACLU.

Crabtree, the crack pot– there are in fact billions of genes not thousands and for every negative mutation there are posivities. If you brought back a Roman citizen today poor fellow would be dumb founded over what he sees, mostly dumb founded over the mindless teaching we get these days in our schools is it any wonder some people appear to be dumb? Indeed it is dumb to allow Crabtee to be teacing our youth and it is dumb that tax money pays for this caliber of of "excellence". Dr Ben Carson (now in the news) is a very good example of how far advanced we have come and where we are headed. Clearly with out the help of Dr Crabtree..

Human intelligence is on the wane because people are losing the moral grounding that was once supplied the major world religions. These traditions have become corrupted and devolved into the extremes seen in the secular materialism of our pop culture and the hate filled insanity of radical Islam.

A good point was raised that generalising about the world population from looking at US food and drinking water is rather ignorant. Furthermore, the article makes a factual error in claiming that Darwin's theory applies less to modern society. It is, as you write, survival of "the fittest", not "the strong", thus the whole argument of a lessening of intelligence builds on that very theory and proves it rather than disproves it: less intelligent are more fit in today's society as they procreate more. "Survival of the fittest" will never diminish in applicability in any society.

"Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber?"

No. The American New Wave band Devo put forth this theory back in the 70's. The name "Devo" comes "from their concept of 'de-evolution' – the idea that instead of continuing to evolve, mankind has actually begun to regress, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society.

Jim, Mr. Darwin got it backwards. Species are DEVOLVING. Please take a look at the book GENETIC ENTROPY by Prof. John Sanford, a Biologist at Cornell University. He says the human-genome is degenerating at a very rapid rate.

Oh yes, because Bush II was such the “thinking man’s candidate,” right? And let’s not forget Quale, Ford, and the Actor teleprompter-reader from General Electric. “Clever” isn’t synonymous with “intelligent.”

Why is it that only the Dems are scholars? Granted, they still work for the same evil bosses.

It's just like the movie "Idiocracy". The dumb people have all the children while the smart people have one or none. It's a slow march to suicide.
Seriously – wake up smart people! Have more kids! The future depends on it!

Is it any wonder with the toxins our food and water, and the culture tolerated in the world of today? The mass migration of uneducated rabble from the third world and miscegenation mainly by white females doesn't help, either.

MOST OBVIOUS REASON FOR THE DECLINE:
Due to social factors, the dumbest and least productive people have the highest numbers of children.
Really. How many Nobel Laureats or physics professors do you know who have seven or eight children?
Welfare fathers frequently father ten or more.

And Mr. Barrett, why do you seem to accept without (much) question that there even is an overall cognitive decline of the human race? Does it really seem plausible that fluorides, pesticides, and processed foods impact the human race as much today as all the diseases, poor sanitation, and ignorance of environmental toxins which existed throughout the past? Did a comparatively greater number of intelligent people somehow survive back in the days when doctors performed bleedings to release the "bad humours" and prescribed mercury-containing compounds as cathartics?

It comes down to laziness and our society's valuation of the guy who can tell you all about the latest glib show – movie star or video-game but hasn't read a book in 3 years because books are boring. Lets not forget about the cult of Hollywood. These are all futile attempts to satiate the ego and debauchery of mankind. I get into this discussion quite often with people who seem to be under the impression that humanity is at its apex in terms of individual knowledge – I see it quite the opposite.

It took a lot of stupid people to vote obama back in last November. This is what the left fasciitis want. HFCS is not natural, and is a chemical made in a lab. Fluoride is found naturally in volcanic gas emissions. Flouride is no longer aloud in water supplies of other counties: China, and India, both big emerging economies! Japan, Germany Switzerland and many more, so its not a globally adopted practice at all. Open you mind man..

Loonies obsessing about fluoride also see Jews under their bed, blame them for 9/11, are negationist and cry all day on the self inflicted fate of the palesto-simian baboons…standard fare from the anarcho-idiots, the Trotskos, the neo-nazi and their jihadi idols…

everything you buy with a ebt card, has corn syrup and starch, cultivated from corn that is much different from the corn you grew it your self. Its all genetically modified to dumb you down and embrace the left. is that so wild?

This is junk "science" of the worst kind. First of all, it seems to be based more on supposition than on evidence. How can he claim to accurately know the mean, median, and statistical range of the intelligence of the whole of Earth's population now, let alone in the time of the ancient Greeks or any other time in history so that he can make a valid comparison? Second, how can he claim to know which of all of mankind's attributes are at play in determining our fitness for survival? And isn't it likely that the attributes which determine survival keep changing over time anyway? Third, why does he assume that because people with "specific adverse genetic mutations" are more likely to survive now than in the past that those people have any less intelligence than someone without the mutation? Fourth, why does he assume that intelligence has been the main determining factor for passing on one's genes up until recent times? You can be as intelligent as Einstein, but if you've got a mutation which renders you sterile, there won't be any baby Einsteins. Overall, it's a pretty arrogant hypothesis: "Mankind is getting dumber, but of course I consider myself smart enough to point it out to all you halfwits out there."

Fluoridated water, processed food, corn syrup, and pesticides have nothing to do with genetics. Rather they are environmental, which begs the question, why is a genecticist bringing this up under the topic of genetics?

Could it be that the "smart" people are having less children… women =careers… and the less intelligent are having many and due to better nutrition, prenatal care, medicine..they survive… it's turning Darwin's theories upside down?
The meek shall inherit the earth… perhaps?

I was going to suggest the same thing. It almost seems like we have a reverse survival of the fittest going on these days. Ghettos & trailer parks are filled with women who get pregnant young & often while suburban woman are increasingly postponing having children to their 30s. Its a concerning trend. The womens movement has done a lot of good but stigmatizing the “stay at home mom” as somehow being backward or oppressed was in my view a big mistake. There’s nothing wrong with having a career but women shouldnt feel like its the only acceptable lifestyle.

by "Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years" do you mean, advancing from a classroom of 20~ children and a teacher infront of a blackboard… to, a classroom of 20~ children and a teacher infront of a white board?

Hey genius writer man and fellow genius scientists. Ever consider the fact that a welfare state in place for 50 years or more now makes it possible (even encourages) procreation by those who in the past would have died or been too poor to have children? There's been 3 or 4 generations now of this.

yep, and the noble classes (ie. the few smart people in antiquity) had regular wars each summer to help cull the masses of the ignorant masses.

There was a reason the nobles didn't usually participate in the battles and were only allowed to marry another of "noble" blood. They had an basic understanding even then that intelligence was passed on, and that they shouldn't inbreed with the masses of retarded peasants.

Our schools no longer make kids do the work, real work..our society has gone no where in reguards of education..our kids listen to filthy dirty music and parents let them, they have no clue about history or the history of this country and they could care less..all kids these days care about is getting laid. The blacks still talk trash..the mexicans donot speak english and the white kids think its cool to emulate blacks..gays are running politics and the media and they are the most unstable humans on earth..we have a president who is an ass and a congress who have become boarderline communist-stalin mixture, we are the only country on earth ever in history to have so much and are on the verge of losing it because people are so stupid to elect a radical black man because of the color of his skin…insane.

The decline in intellligence is due to the increase in the number of blacks and hispanics in this country. IQ tests have shown that these groups on average have lower IQ's than whites or asians. Our welfare system pays for poor people with low IQ's to reproduce. This does not mean that all blacks and all hispanics have low IQ's. There are plenty with above average ones. But the average for those groups as a whole is lower.

The article makes no mention of race, or cites IQ tests as an accurate measure of intelligence. So where exactly did you see in this article that the the decline of intelligence in this country is because there are more blacks amd hispanics? Or did you just take some other statistic out of context and just apply some of that data in unrelated article. That sounds pretty scientific amd trustworthy.

I believe what he says is totally true, just look how many low IQ beings in this forum swallow a theory that has no fundamental scientific method to it and could be totally wrong. This piece of news is priceless for the National Enquirer!!!!

Perhaps the decline is not genetic at all, but rather it is a result of a society that punishes successful people by confiscating their hard earned wealth, while the derelict are rewarded with more largess from the government. Innovation is not spurred by the natural desire to contribute to the "greater good" as so many naive people believe, but rather the desire to make one's life better through financial independence. As governments, in the name of "fairness" continue to provide more and more of a safety-net, more and more people will take advantage of that safety-net and contribute less and less to society. We are becoming a world of lazy, video game playing spoiled brats, who believe they are entitled to everything, regardless of what we contribute.

It's not all of the above, its communist indoctrination, at all levels from grade school to college, to bilge about global warming etc. plus all the insane activity by dysfunctional leadership. plus the fact that people cant talk and chew gum, cell phone towers [email protected] this is stupid is as stupid does crowd, review history of communist indoctrination. this geneticist must be allegedly getting an grant.

So far I have seen no remark about the legalization of marajuana possibly contributing to a decline in intelligence of our children. Please check into a recently released study that indicates a 10 point drop in IQ for preteens habitually using marajuana.

I work at a large U.S. law firm. The attorneys between the ages of 25-30 cannot spell; cannot string a sentence together; cannot create drafts. Many attorneys have 2 or 3 computer screens on their desks showing websites that are not work related–Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. They spend a great deal of the client's time with their faces glued to their iPhones or tablets. This is a horrible addiction. Many times the younger attorneys ask ME to start or complete their work and I am not an attorney because they have spent the past 6 hours on the internet. People are becoming isolated and addicted.

We reward stupidity by paying stupid people to fail. (welfare) The more they fail, the stupider they become.
They reproduce stupid children at an amazing rate, and we pay THEM to be even stupider. Thus, liberalism has created the drop in IQ.

You know when fluoridation began?…1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice.

That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love… Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I — I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake…but I do deny them my essence.

People are becoming dumber because the dumb people reproduce at age 15 and their children do too, where as the smart people put having kids off til after college and grad school, say age 30. So if they all have the same number of kids, say 2, then dumb ones will have double the number that smart people do just based on their more frequent generations. And it is probably true that smart people have fewer kids which would make this effect even stronger.

It looks like you just laid out the opening of “Idiocracy” there. It’s sad but terribly true. That movie actually scared me more than it made me laugh. It’s that true and you just highlighted the opening segment. Kinda makes it scarier…

How about mental hyper-stimulation at a young age, by various electronic entertainment media? It's already known that watching television at a young age causes problems with learning, to the extent that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 2 years watch NO TV at all. What effect might hours, days, decades of sedentary video game playing have on developing minds? It can't be good.

I am Twenty years old. I was first introduced to television and other “screens” at a young age and i grew up borderline addicted. Now, I have no interest in anything screen related besides my computer and phone. During my senior year of high school, I was tested for ADHD that could have been linked to not doing well in school. While the results weren’t entirely conclusive, the analyst recommended i take a couple of IQ tests. My composite score ended up being 156, high enough for admission to Mensa.

To say that Fluoride diminishes our IQ and genetic fitness suggests two things. Firstly, that the current IQ test is the all encompassing standard for cognitive ability, and also that the outcome of this test directly corresponds to the objective fitness of our genes. There is a huge disconnect in doing this. Also, there is the glaring paradox of devolution being fallacy. It doesn't occur. If you believe that our gene pool is going in the wrong direction based on standardized testing with such a weak relationship of such testing corresponding to the fitness of our genes, then you would potentially be able to publish anything.

I was looking for some convincing epistemology, the basic premise being difficult to prove. Devolution due to survival of culls makes some sense as current material culture does (for the moment) protect defectives from negative checks. The fall back on food additives, flurodation and other things that vitiate and drain our precious bodily fluids pretty much sinches this as pseudo-scientific gibble-gabble. A large portion of the populace has been markedly stupid throughout history and left ample evidence of it . They were talking about a " hard corps of chronic know-nothings in teh 1960s and even then a significant portion of the american public couldn't identify the current president, the branches of governement or the simplist discription of the solar system. Educated people in the past were proportionaly rarer than in modern times even though there general fund of knowlege was much deeper and their thought processes more rational. This stems more from corruption of the educational system by marxist dogma than any provable physiological deterioration.

It's the "I want free stuff" mentality… the nation is filling with lazy, slothful, worthless parasites who don't work for anything. Not only are they physically lazy, they are becoming intellectually lazy, too. Liberalism is poly-axial toxicity.

Some of the above may be true to an extent… But, my money is on our education system, as to the seemingly unending number of just down right ignorant people with a total lack of critical thinking skills. The progressives have worked their magic over these past one hundred years. Orwell only missed it by a little, and Ayn Rand hit it out of the park.

We are getting dumber because survival of the fittest has ended courtesy of the welfare state. Worse yet, the unemployed and unemployable reproduce at a higher rate than the productive and intelligent.

The human race has peaked. It’s downhill from here. Glad I won’t be around to see it. I wish our idiot politicians could be around for it.

I think technology makes people stupid. For instance, cell phone contact lists. All of my friends can not remember a phone number because the phone remembers it for them. People don't remember solutions to problems because they can look them up on the Internet. It becomes less important to remember things if you have a backup system.

Here's another problem: Socrates dies in 399 B.C., and both Plato and Aristotle follow a half-decade later. Athens in 1000 B.C.???? And women in ancient Athens had no political rights and / or interest in issues.

But, then again, perhaps this askew historical reference proves the main point of the article…

Food, water? C'mon folks you've been dumbed down. The true culprits are many and varied but include egalitarianism, tv, computers, smart phones, cell phones, teachers unions, movies, pop music, out of wedlock births and more. See the future in the film "Idiocracy".

Why name just a few of your perceived dumbers? Could antibactterials, antibiotics, new concoctions of pain relievers, radiation, magnetic fields or other more modern developments be just as guilty as the the ones you flippantly listed? It seems you're trying to be more politically correct than factually.Who knows, maybe our access to a daily bath is washing away our gray matter. With the proliferation of condoms our sex acts require less forethought today than 500 years ago. Then it had more meaning. What you may need is a real job.

This article spends too much space trying to explain away an obvious truth: heredity is just about everything.

If we accept this truth (and it certainly is true) then we must consider a host of new ideas, on topics ranging from “African-American equality” to Jewish domination of the news and entertainment media.

Many of the mutations don't seem to be for the better. All dogs evolved from wild dogs. Wolves are much smarter than domesticated dogs. They've tested them using mazes and in other ways. The wolves will find their way out of the maze much faster than domesticated dogs. Domestic dogs are often the food of wild dogs.

It's not looking good for mankind. We might be an evolutionary dead end.

Relates to the comment I made earlier about the nature of abstract or plastic intelligence. Overall, people in all regions of the world are better informed than ever before. However, this does not mean that they have a deep understanding of the information they are receiving. These process is moving faster in some areas of the world than others, but it is occurring. Our abstract or plastic intelligence is on the decline for various reasons. One reason is that it is becoming increasing compartmentalized; i.e. largely being developed and rewarded through the process of earning a Ph.D. The Ph.D. is one of the last bastions of medieval times, although the research orientation originated in 19th century Germany. Another reason is that education is simply not very rigorous, certainly not in the U.S. and on the decline in many regions of the world.

I read an article not too long ago about Germany having a drop in average IQ. They said it was related to immigration, and declining birthrate. It's worrisome since that is one of the countries that historically has had citizens with of the highest average IQs. They also said that the immigrants were less interested in education. That country has been actively recruiting people from other countries to fill high tech positions. A professor wrote some time back that he went to an international conference and one of the things everyone was talking about was the increase in students entering college unprepared. It seems to be universal problem.

Of course the Wolves are smarter. They have to depend entirely upon themselves for their existence. Once they have been domesticated they rely upon the intelligence of their keepers to take care of them. They don't have to find shelter, they don't have to find and kill their food. This is the same for people. If you take people out of the city they are lost. Most kids now don't even know where their food comes from and some don't even know that meat comes from an animal! And now with all the government programs we are really doomed. If they ever go down we will have anarchy and total chaos.

Just look at the guy downing a Mountain Dew, 3 Big Mac's, or a Monster Energy drink. Go check out his cognitive function! The guys I saw in high school drinking Surge in the late '90's went straight to basic training or drug rehab where I'm from. Just saying!

You can think whatever you want. Why do most Americans think you're generalizing the whole damn pie when you mention anything they might not necessarily agree with! The late General Schwarzkopf had an IQ of 160. I liked both him and Patton. Great military leaders!

When you sign up now, people need to understand what they're getting into. This isn't like signing up in the mid 1980's when we weren't invading the entire Mid East in a campaign of Neo-Colonialism, Globalism, or whatever you wish to call it sir!

I have severe sleep apnea, Tourettes, Aspergers, upper respiratory problems, and I'm not even fat. I'm sure in another life, I would have what it takes to be a military man. I have always revered military guys, firemen, the police ever since growing up.

The only thing I have against Drudge followers is that they still believe in the old fashioned false right-left paradigm (Rethug vs Demoncrat) and that Muslims control the US. When Kennedy got elected, they said Catholics control the White House, when Bush got elected, they said Evangelicals control the White House, and when Obama was elected, they said Muslims control the White House. Is anyone aware of good old fashioned Zionism since 1897? Guess not!

It is very interesting that with all the ridiculous reruns repeating on tv ,Tuskeegee Airmen, Time for a kill, Missippi burning..there is never Orwell" 1984" with Richard Burton or Idiocracy…VERY INTERESTING indeed

My thoughts lead directly to the origins of man. For one who believes in Creationism as opposed to Evolution, humans losing intelligence over time makes perfect sense. Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit (ie. sin entered the equation), humans have slowly been on a downward spiral. Physically and mentally.

For everyone who believes that humans evolved from apes which evolved from other things all the way back to single cell organisms, this article has to blow your mind. I thought mutations made things better! Right? Wrong. Mutations never have and never will create more intelligent animals or longer life. Only the opposite.

So, I guess this article doesn't surprise me at all! Don't believe everything you hear in school. Evolution is not the only "scientific" explanation for creation. There are many scientists who believe in a young and God created universe.

"Mutations make species more likely to adapt to change in the environment."

I don't believe that is accurate. Your mixing up adaption and mutations. But it doesn't really impact what I said anyway.

I believe that genetic mutations and basic entropy are going to continue to have a cumulative negative impact on life. I don't think you can show me any case where science has seen mutations make an improvement to life.

Some will talk about species adapting to the environment as a form or evolution or mutation but that is a different thing all together. When God created man and animals (separatly), he included an incredible amount of data in our genes. This data allowed the original man and animals to spread out and adapt to different areas of the world. Think of dogs… something like a wolf has much more "data" in it's genes and was able to be bread into all the types of dogs we have today. These dogs have "adapted", not evolved or mutated.

Shaun, a good place to find information about a young earth and creationist viewpoint of the world is with an organization called Answers In Genesis. Please check out the links below and have an open mind.

We've had the "fact" that the earth is billions of years old drilled into our heads for years but there are a lot of very smart scientists who support the notion of a young earth.

There are a lot of other sources of information out there as well but the ones below are pretty good.

If we’d stop medicating everyone, vaccinating everyone, giving away food and medicine to those who aren’t intelligent enough to provide for themselves, our population would naturally stabilize, the deadwood would be eliminated, and the truly intelligent and adaptable survivors would carry on a strong human lineage.

Bet you your comments on here go directly to a Homeland Security/Fusion Center database for people to pick up and throw in a FEMA Camp once the shiat hits the fan. Now be nice! Who do you think funds all these sites to begin with. Its all controlled oppostion!

The Babyboomers sitting on your City Council are the ones allowing the fluoridation of your water. I don't see too many 38 year olds sitting on those City Councils. Just wrinkled old farts that have a golf game to go to!

The original hypothesis and all of the alternatives that follow in this article are seriously flawed and betray a definite lack of understanding of evolution. First of all, where is the evidence that human intelligence is on the decline? I didn't see a shred of evidence to support any of this speculation.
1. The Flynn Effect is a well known trend in IQ scores describing the roughly 3 point-per-decade increase in IQ scores that occurred throughout the 20th century. This increase in IQ score is in direct contrast to the supposed claim of Crabtree.
2. Nutrition is part of the reason that average IQ has been on the rise over this time period, which is in direct contrast to most of the "alternatives" in this article. Sure, some foods are bad for you, but overall IQ has been supported by the vast improvements in nutrition that have occurred over the last 100 years.

This guy is not better than a conspiracy theorist. He uses pseudoscience to back dubious claims that better reflect his own personal bias than any actual science. It is sad and sick when people attempt to pervert science for their own personal bias.

Fluoride in water and also in toothpaste calcifies the pineal gland, or third eye chakra, hindering innate intuition and connection to one's higher intelligence and spirituality. Fluoride is a dangerous toxic chemical waste that has no health basis at all. I have eliminated Fluoride from my life for 3 years and have dramatically improved my health, my teeth have been without cavities, and my higher intuitive abilities have skyrocketed. There is a huge conspiracy to keep Fluorite in water and in other products so that humanity does not reach its full potential, and stays intellectually and spiritually asleep, it's very sad. There is a lot of info. on the Web about this, if you are interested. As a holistic healer myself, I feel it is vitally important that this information about Fluoride get out into the public, take a look.

All animals face the same problem with evolution. They evolve towards faster, stronger, smarter, while at the same time evolving towards more energy efficient. The two goals contradict each other. Animals can consume less energy by being weaker and dumber. Overpopulation has consequences and this is one of them.

Of course all of the things this article points out support the ideals and premises of those who favor a naturopathic outlook. The publisher, Natural Society, should give you a hint as to the agenda in this article. That, along with all of the high points, fluoride, HFCS, Pesticides, Processed foods, etc. I tried the naturopathic approach, had myself checked out, measured, and spent a boatload of money on supplements, tinctures 'attuned' to my specific needs, and other natural products, with no verifiable improvement in my health, and no change in my allergies, nasal congestion, and other symptoms that were supposed to be addressed by my naturopathic regimen. And believe me, I followed it, added more, changed, got re-read, etc. etc….all with no changes. Sorry folks, this kind of thing may work for some, but not for me. Read between the lines and open your eyes to the underlying agenda of reports like this.

I live a healthy lifestyle and I am vegan and healthy but I like you don't believe in all the supplements, tinctures etc. As with medication anything can be over done, not properly used or needed anyway. It's all about the money. If you don't McDonald's three times a day or any other processed garbage you will be fine! This article has a lot of holes but some good points too. I just take what I need from these kind of articles and discard the rest.

The certain evidence of the decline of human intelligence is the difference between the people that wrote the Constitution of the United States and the people that are currently bastardizing it whenever they can. If there were no Constitution, the current crop of D.C. denizens couldn't duplicate the grace and dignity of the first pararaph.

That was the reason behind the 64 immigration act that made 3rd world people choice among immigrants. Emanuel Cellar was the main man behind it. Ted Kennedy promoted it as his first initiative to make a name for himself and the idiots passed it. Kennedy promised that the demographics of the USA would not change with the passing of this bill. By the 70's NYC was infested with 3rd worlders and crime was through the roof. The city became filthy and went bankrupt.

It's the increase in the populations of South and central American Hispanics (Indians) and lets not forget the ever increasing African population. Both races never accomplish vary much of anything and to this vary day contribute vary little to the world. Genetically they are inferior to the Whites, Asians, and Hindus. The Gods place them on this planet as worker bee's, they were isolated from the civilized world until the last 500 years. They are mixing and being counted along side with the more intelligent and developed peoples of the world, so of course the world is dumbing down, almost like the movie Idiocracy.

Ripper: Mandrake?
Mandrake: Yes, Jack?
Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, I can't say I have, Jack.
Ripper: Vodka, that's what they drink, isn't it? Never water?
Mandrake: Well, I-I believe that's what they drink, Jack, yes.
Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.
Mandrake: Oh, eh, yes. I, uhm, can't quite see what you're getting at, Jack.
Ripper: Water, that's what I'm getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this Earth's surface is water. Why, do you realize that 70 percent of you is water?
Mandrake: Good Lord!
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (he begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (more laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don't know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?

The comments are awesome. I knew intellectually that there were people out there who found this kind of reporting credible, but to see it on display like this really warms the heart. I think we've definitely proven that paranoia is increasing among the population, at the very least.

But on the other hand, the more people who believe this, the more likely the premise is to be true … which would make it correct … but it doesn't square with reality … but [head explodes].

Intelligence and education are self-limiting. The first thing that happens when a society advances and increases education is the limitation of family size by the most intelligent, best-educated couples. The well-fed and cared for lower intelligences breed at will. The average IQ must decrease. As to the fluoridated water, I thought that most people drink filtered water now. At least I have for 20 years.

If humans were so smart 1000 years ago how come they didn't have tv,radio, movies,computers,antibiotics, telephones,cars,planes,rockets,big macs,m&m's,walmarts,eyeglasses,trains,insulin,light bulbs,etc.

Um, `000 BC was 3,000 years ago. Not 1000 years. Society and science were progressing then. But not as quickly as philosophy (pure thought). All of our science and technology is built on what they learned and passed on to us. Each generation has built on the accomplishments of those who went before.
We also have a higher density of scientists working on the same projects and just more individual brains to devote to projects and problems which is why our tech has advanced more quickly as time goes on.
But, yes, I agree that, at least in the west, overall intelligence seems to be in decline. I think this is due to our society making it possible for the "weak" (including those who are mentally damaged or at the level of moron or idiot) to reproduce and indeed making it financially possible for them to do so by supporting their offspring.
Some say that when two idiots mate that the offspring can be intelligent. I don't believe in that. Not if they idiots are the ones to rear the child. They won't provide enough mental stimulation to the kid to give it a good start at brain development. Poor brain development equals low intelligence.

Yep. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama. You're an idiot if you think this is one side vs. the other. You people here sound like you buy the MSM's fake us vs. them garbage hook, line, and sinker. Believe me when I say neither side is on your side. And all these comments about academia dumbing down, yet you're posting affirmative comments about an article written by an academic at Stanford. I guess if you don't BELIEVE what other people are saying, then it must be false. It's further confirmation of the thesis posited in the article for sure.

Bush better never leave the USA. He has reason to fear legal complaints against him and arrest for being a war criminal. He will be snatched and put on trial. He already had to cancel a trip to Switzerland. Cheney needs to fear also.

thanks for that fabulous reminder the leftists are generally unfit to participate in civilization due to their propensity to seek to destroy those with whom they disagree. IOW, yours is the party of tyranny.

Considering the victors write the history books, according to your theory, Bush should be getting some major PR upgraades in the years to come. Maybe even get a spot on Mt. Rushmore. But considering who's writing the history books today, they'll have a hard time even spelling Bush much less nuclear. Yeah, thanks to our rigorous education system, history will have a hard time judging anybody who's not in WWF, but guess who'll get all the love? The one who hands out "free" phones and unemployment checks like candy.

He was far from the worst president. The funny thing about presidents is that they never fulfil voter's expectations. Presidents to be successful must govern from the middle facilitating compromise. Regardless of your political affiliation you must admit the Obama is incapable of compromise. He demands his a agenda bullying and belittling his opponents. The President can never take the high ground. His speeches at his inauguration and state of union address demonstrate this perfectly. He is incapable of unifying the nation in support of his agenda with out making low brow and odious references to his opponents. A true amateur lowering the statesmanship of the presidency.

He forgot to mention political correctness and affirmative action that have destroyed education throughout the country. That's the biggest factor. All the other reasons he mentioned are merely secondary.

Don't blame the teachers. Blame the politicians and administrators that are pushing a weak and ineffective teaching environment that puts the score on one test compared to a DIFFERENT set of students above all else.

Typical uninformed believe everything in the news viewpoint . What's lacking in these days are parents who foster learning in the home before and during a child's formal education. Most people these days are dumb dumbs who eat too much fast food and live in front of the TV.

IQ is at the very least 50% genetic. education teaches facts and mental discipline but does not raise or lower intelligence. those on the lower half of the bell curve have more children in general and make the intelligence decline more obvious.

Except that education does NOT "teach facts." Our system teaches political correctness, "feeling" whether something is right or wrong instead of how to reason, or, at best, teaches WHAT to think instead of HOW.

I don't think so. I have a child who, in the 4th Grade brought home a part of her "social studies" text that taught her class that the first Thanksgiving was held to thank the Native Americans for their help in the preceding year! Utter nonsense, of course. We're teaching our children how to put a condom on a banana–but not whether or not to engage in activities that would ordinarily require a condom in the first place. We are telling our children that they must not only tolerate homosexuality, but celebrate, or even embrace it. We're teaching our kids that the path to greatness for this country is "diversity," but are demanding conformity of thought to achieve academic approval. It's in THAT sense that we're teaching them WHAT to think instead of HOW. I graduated from HS in 1960. I'm not so old that I don't remember that my best teachers were those that challenged me to think for myself and gave me the tools with which to do so.

Education today, I would argue, does not teach mental discipline. It does not promote critical thinking or debate (which strengthens mental ability). The brain is similar in some ways to your muscles – it can be trained and exercised and must be in order to excel. School kids simply aren't getting the mental training necessary to be proficient thinkers.

Learning and the development of wisdom that sometimes accompanies it may be taught. Intelligence is a measure of potential performance only, so we cannot blame the teachers for that directly. The culture of education does bear some responsibility by teaching nonsense like multiculturism. Promoting Islam as a viable philosophy means that a society is encouraged that rewards conformity rather than independent thought. This removes intelligence from the gene pool. The integration of Stone Age and other primitive cultures into our superior Euro Judeo culture encourages crossbreeding with those that have not bred for intelligence, also not desirable for the gene pool. Openly discussing this with an "educator" will give her the vapors. Until recently, education was delivered from the elders, who had experience to perferct their learning and time to craft it all into wisdom rather than those with theoretical educations and little wisdom.

NOW you're getting at it: believe what the teacher believes and you will be judged to be "smart." Differ and you are an insensitive (see the emotion instead of reason and logic therein?) backwood hick who has not been properly refined.

Must say I have to agree. Look at how many people voted for Obama because they thought (wrongly) that they were going to get "free stuff." Look at how many high school graduates we have who can't read their own diplomas or write a coherent sentence but are "graduated" so the school's "graduation rate" will look good on paper. Look at how many people we have "achieving" BA degrees in such silly "disciplines" as "Minority studies," "Sociology" or Phys Ed. and then are hired to TEACH because they can't find a decent job elsewhere…certainly not in their chosen field.

The "magic sky daddy" and his "ten commandments" for a decent life have been taken out of the schools decades ago. It's obvious that it isn't the "magic sky daddy", or the belief in him, that has caused our schools and intelligence to deteriorate. Again – "criticial thinking skills" are what is missing – as you yourself, MichaelIT, have so aptly shown. 😉

Yet it doesn't seem even the wee-est bit odd to you that public school grades began their race to the bottom of the world around 1973 in the U.S.? Let's see now….WHAT happened in 1973 that might have caused this????

The extremity of the smartest will slowly increase while the average intelligence is pulled toward the low end by the massive numbers of dummies from the low end of the intelligence scale reproducing at a higher rate. Government perverts natural selection by favoring dummy reproduction and eliminating the most intelligent thereby decreasing the reproduction and numbers of intelligent people, who are those that resist the tyranny intrinsic to dummy favoring government.

And who woulod the "smartest" be? The Ivy League grads who have been inundating governemnt since the Kennedy days? They certainly done a great job getting us into unnecessary wars, massive, unsustainable national debt, and a completely failed public education system.

And what segments of our society, and the world society have the highest reporduction rates?

How is it you measure IQ, those who agree with you? This is why you are so very reviled. You arrogant snob. Your only talent is making fun of people who have proven themselves far superior to your small little mind, good people such as the Romney family. If Mitt were in charge right now he would not be out on the golf course with the likes of Tiger Woods, that's for sure.

Are you refering to Sen. Harry Reid of NV who is a Mormon who somehow became a multi-millionaire on a senator's salary or Jeffrey Immelt of GE who was chairman of obama's jobs council that never met and who has shipped thousands of GE jobs to China. Please select one of the above.

Growing up in Grand Rapids Michigan in the 60's where they first fluoridated water, I had tons of cavities throughout my childhood. Now, as an adult, I've been drinking bottled water for over 20 years and I've had maybe 2 cavities in that same 20 years.

I'm not sure on this as I'm not a scientist and research is to inconclusive, but I tend to think that fluoride was meant to be put on teeth, not ingested. I Brush with it, but I don't drink it.

Oh, I need to add this. My children's teeth are not rotting out of their heads and they drink bottled water only. Sounds like you just don't know how to take care of your children, it's not the water, it's all the crap you let them eat.

They usually only have a modest number of children. It is the gold-toothed rapper with his pants on the ground that has ten kids with ten different baby mommas or the hillbilly trailer park prince and princess who have more beer and meth than milk and juice in their fridge. Both of whom are able to procreate so prolifically thanks to tax dollars of folks with only the number of children they can afford (about 1.2 kids at present) or able to raise to be good citizens between their two jobs.

Well, Dwayne, you've just inadvertantly stated what others have posted as to the "reason" we're getting less intelligent as a whole. Demographically speaking, the average couple of a society needs to have 2.3 children, or else the population will decline. Those with more "intelligence" and who "have what it takes to succeed, are not having enough children to perpetuate their genes, and those with less intelligents are breeding like rabbits, since all of our social engineering won't let the rawness of the evolutionary process weed out the less fit.

So a society of truly stupid people would do well and present as much opportunity for the person who was lucky enough to have another three IQ points?

IMHO, the intelligence of society overall creates more opportunity. You may be a brilliant inventor but if there nobody creates the materials your invention requires or if nobody figures out the logistics of getting it to consumers, you are in trouble and won't do as well.

Based on many of the posts I see its clear that the meat puppets are truly dumbing down, but don't believe for a second that this isn't by design. Stupid fat people ask no questions & put up no fight thus preserving the status quo just as the elites would have it.

My son got all the questions correct on the hardest IQ test the public school gave him. My brother is a physicist. My childhood home had a private well will no fluoride. I also was allergic to many things, so my diet was limited. I didn't eat any fish during pregnancy, to eliminate mercury exposure. I bought water for my babies without fluoride. I don't like plastic food storage. My kids were breastfed, with very little use of plastic bottles. They never used a pacifier. I rarely even used shampoo on my children. No pesticides. I bought organic meat. I can't tell you if it made a difference or not, but my kids don't have any allergies, and my brothers and I were plagued with them.

I was born in the 1960's – the height of pesticide use, and I have no allergies. I still live in this same place, and I still have no problems. There are some who blame the air, and some who blame the water and some who blame the food. Maybe it is something else – let me guess – free market economics and the rule of law by process. That is what you want to blame. If the place you live in is such the problem, then move!

so, what your saying is if things get bad you shouldn't try and make them better? See, you are exactly the type of person this article is talking about.

The only thing we have to like to be an American is the Constitution, other than that we have the right to talk about what we do not like and the right to change it. These rights are given to us by the constitution. If you don't like freedom of speech, you go live somewhere else.

Sounds to me as if the nanny is the problem 😉 I must agree with you, some people always have to blame this and that, and this results to paranoia. So many youtube videos making money off of these types of subjects.. At least I know I won't have to spend as much money out in the market!

I've encouraged my children to each have a dozen or so baby mamas. The government wouldn't be paying if they didn't want you to reproduce like mad! If they run out of money they can do a remake of the rap video "Thrift Store."

Well don't you just sound like a proud mother who seems to have gotten diluted without the help of fluoride! IQ tests are redundant because you can see that every person is unique and all an IQ test shows is how well a person can respond to its stimulus. The organism is so powerful.. I garauntee you that with the whole flouride thing, you and your diet are being overly paranoid.. You should realize that millions of Indians who live on just bread and water live much longer and NEVER get sick then a person who eats a 20 course diet..

That made more sense than any of the other statements. I do wonder about the test pool they used. Was it mostly from the inner city? Was it a cross section of people or from the Congo? What group tested the poorest and what group the highest. I'm thinking that Western Europeans, some groups of North Americans, "but not all," and groups of Asia did the best. Of course PC has to level the playing field, doesn't it…

Its a culmination of the hydrofluorsilic acid in our water (from the phosphate industry in China), GMO foods, Chemtrails, high fructose corn syrup, as well as lack of a good educational system. Its not just one thing, its many things that contribute to a child's IQ before they reach age 6. Even though sodium fluoride was first added to water in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1945, most communities didn't even fluoridate until the 1970's and 1980's. Hell, it wasn't unitl 1965 that New York City fluoridated their water. The babyboomers X'd out Generation X. The silent generation and babyboomers are chemical addicts! Just to scare the lemmings, they will threaten you with a 1800's lifestyle.

You are righ on Dan. Well what we are seeing is a well executed plan. There is a plan against the American people to make us the stupid. Its like organized criminals have said "the best way to break the law is right in front of the police". The conspiracy to dumb us down is working well so that those in power who wish harm on us can carry out the other parts of their nasty plans right in front of us without us noticing. Be careful because they appear to be preparing to enact their end game. Hyper inflation is about to set in, they are making a move to take the guns, they are about to implement obama care(which will have an RFID chip in every American by 2015) and tensions between Iran and Isreal are heating up. Any and all of these things could lead to martial law, in which case they get to accelerate their devious plans. Get informed and get the word out.

You hit the nail right on the head. Diet has an extremely large influence on intelligence. You are what you eat is only half. 1 out of five adults are on psychotropic drugs.
The ones in charge (not the ones we think, I suspect a group called the Illuminati) have a plan.
I truly believe martial law is imminent.

It is funny how some scientists and demographers were hailing the Flynn Effect, " The substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day." As a scientist-professor, I am inclined to believe that we have a better informed population, albeit one that does not necessarily understand the roots of ideas, theories, etc., but one that is declining in abstract and plastic intelligence. The latter term is mine. Plasticity or plastic intelligence is humankind's true intelligence, the real genetic selector, which is the ability to adapt rapidly to changing environments. In the contemporary world this is the ability to learn quickly. If placed in a new environment; i.e. a foreign country, this could be manifested in the ability to adapt by learning the language, even without formal instruction, inter alia. I have seen this many times; some people adapt very quickly and they are they ones who usually do well. Others cannot adapt even with instruction and help. They would have perished in the past and their genes removed from the pool.

The ability to adapt to new environments isn't solely based on intelligence… Refer to the eccentric writers, etc for proof of that. Intelligence in itself is subjective. I know people who are 'brilliant,' yet they dropped out of college and/or performed poorly. Obviously, on average, drop outs rarely do as well as those who have a degree, though.

IQ has been pretty well tested and confirmed to measure g, a general intelligence factor. That includes a significant measure of abstract intelligence.

It's not clear how "plastic intelligence" would be reflected in IQ scores.

Do you have any data to support your idea that abstract and plastic intelligence are going down, or are you perhaps being mislead by the experience of running into atypical people (say, college students of one sort or another)

What you term "plastic" intelligence has earlier been named "fluid" intelligence, which when combined with "crystallized" intelligence represents the total package.
On the "better informed population" – true for part of it, but certainly not for all of it. Ever seen Leno's "Jaywalking?" Hard to believe those folks are capable of tying their shoelaces.
On the "Flynn Effect" – bogus – can only be explained by statistical manipulation of the data. Evolutionary changes cannot happen that quickly.

True and I don't think this has anything to do with "evolution." I think it's more a function of the wholly-idiotic idea that "all children can learn if you can just find the right combination." We "mainstream" the mentally disabled thinking that makes them "feel good" about themselves. Unfortunately, the teacher finds herself or himself devoting the majority of his/her time to those kids instead of teaching the class…wasting the classes time, for the most part.

I agree on the "mainstreaming" of those with reduced mental skills – that only makes it worse for all the other children. My wife is a grade school teacher, and she has two highly autistic children in her class. Far too much of her time is spent calming these two down when one or the other is having a "fit" (or crapping their pants…). They can scream and carry on for hours! How is this "fair" for the other children? They are many factors and this is just a small aside to the gist of the article in question, but for sure the "mainstreaming" of children that should be in their own special classes, is a small part of a small section of why "Johnny can't read". (or write, or think critically….)

Language is a special case and not necessarily related closely to general intelligence like any of a number of specific aptitudes. There is no evidence to suggest that language acquisition is a valid metric for general intelligence.

Sorry, fluoride occurred naturally in two locales in the US (in addition to certain areas in Mongolia!). One of them was Marshall, TX. These two (I think the other one was Sedalia, MO) received the first fluoride experiment. I had the misfortune to be among the guinea pigs in Marshall even though I wasn't born there, Those of my generation who were born there were monitored annually (I have no idea what they were looking for by having all those "lucky" kids chew the orange gum. Although my IQ is at the top of the accurately measurable scale (before IQ tests were dumbed down), I lost most of my teeth due to finding out late in life that fluoridated toothpaste was causing my gum disease. When I began suffering from gum disease, I, as could be expected, began to brush more often (sometimes every two hours with–you guessed it–fluoridated toothpaste). Now the few teeth I have left (BTW, I had my first cavity at age 22!), I have managed to save by using only non-fluoridated toothpaste or, when I can't get that, soda and salt.

I observe many that graduate from university have little ability to contextualize events…In other words "Critical Thinking" may be foreign to many that have university diplomas. Why this is so should come from those much smarter than I.

As for the average "Joe" on the street I observed "Critical Thinking" in conversations…why a journeyman plumber, electrician…have a grasp of economics, world politics, regional politics that exceed university graduates? Again, the answer must come from those smarter than I but…we all drink the same water, eat the same fast foods….?

Slaves drank pure water, yeah right. All civilizations have been drinking diluted fermented beverages since the before recorded history. Water was rarely fit to drink unless you were able to access it directly outside of cities and densely populated areas.

Even outside of cities the water was often not pure, just like today. If you climb to the top of the Continental Divide in the Rockies you're above the influence of cities yet the water is not fit to drink because of natural contaminants such as animal feces. The purification process until modern times involved adding alcohol. It was considered barbaric, even in ancient times, to drink fermented juices such as wine without diluting them at least 1:1 and more often 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1 with wine to purify them.

What about history, rethoric, art, science? It's idiotic to expect "the three rs" to educate a person to the point you will consider him or her "an educated person". The most important thing you need to teach children is to think for themselves and they'll realize how stupid it is to try to keep their mind restricted to "the three rs"…especially when those who say it also want to res
trict what they read, write, and add up.